North Carolina medical journal
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Health outcomes in North Carolina are less than optimal. To drive improvement, we must prepare a health care workforce adequate in number, optimally distributed geographically, skilled with forward-looking expertise, and empowered to practice in interprofessional teams at the highest extent of their license. This issue of the North Carolina Medical Journal outlines how North Carolina's health profession education institutions are working to open new programs and innovate curricula to produce the workforce that our state needs.
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Despite its increasing urbanization, North Carolina still has a large rural population that lacks optimal health care. While multiple programs have been successful in recruiting clinicians to rural communities, improving the retention of those clinicians will require the development and implementation of novel strategies along with the evaluation of their effectiveness.
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Team-based methods of delivering primary care were launched nationally within the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) through the Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT) initiative in 2010. The most essential component of PACT is the establishment of partnerships between veterans and their health care teams. The purpose of PACT is to improve and transform the way in which veterans receive health care. This partnership is aimed at promoting efficiency and improving the quality of care and clinical outcomes by providing holistic care that embodies the whole person.
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North Carolina has made progress toward improving the health of its citizens, yet much more needs to be done. Now is the right time for the state to transform its Medicaid and North Carolina Health Choice programs into a managed care delivery system that gives providers more flexibility to deliver care that focuses on the whole person and benefits people's lives beyond the medical setting. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is focused on maximizing opportunities and managing challenges, and the department understands that collaboration of health care professionals and other stakeholders is essential to achieve the right results for North Carolinians.