Contents tagged with family medicine residency program

  • Patient-centered medical home: Are we or aren’t we?

    Tags: texas family physician, perspective, patient-centered medical home, family medicine residency program

    Thursday, March 29, 2012 3:56:08 PM
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    By David W. Bauer, M.D.

    When is a patient-centered medical home not a patient-centered medical home? In my practice, the answer is “every day.” In 2009 we received NCQA’s designation as a Level 3 PCMH. To achieve this, our physicians had to document ways in which our patients had enhanced access to our practice, provide examples of how we use evidence-based guidelines to provide quality care, demonstrate the means by which we coordinated care across time and space, and a number of other measures. We do, in fact, do those things every day. What we don’t do, is do all of them for every single patient, every single day.

    Consider the analogy of a patient with diabetes whose hemoglobin A1c is 6.9. We would say that the patient’s diabetes is well controlled and congratulate the patient. But there are many ways that a patient could achieve this value. One would be to have very little fluctuation of her glucose from hour to hour. Another would be for the patient to drop into the 40s overnight, and climb to 200 immediately after meals. The hemoglobin A1c is an average, and doesn’t factor in variation. For years, decreasing variation has been the mantra of those working to improve quality, increase efficiency, and decrease medical errors in the hospital setting. As we migrate toward a new model of health care in this country—the PCMH—it would be valuable to embrace this concept in our offices as well.

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  • The super charge

    Tags: budget, family medicine residency program, health care costs, legislature, family physician, payment, graduate medical education

    Monday, November 7, 2011 6:30:00 AM
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    Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, released the interim charges for the standing committees of the House of Representatives. As he said in the accompanying letter, these charges will set the stage for legislation considered during the 83rd Texas Legislature, which convenes in January 2013.

    Of those that may affect family medicine, one assigned to the House Committee on Public Health stands out for its sheer immensity. It directs the committee to:

    • Examine the adequacy of the primary care workforce in Texas, especially considering: the projected increase in need (from an aging population and expanded coverage through federal health care reform), and cuts to workforce-building programs such as graduate medical education and physician loan repayment programs.
    • Study the potential impact of medical school innovations, new practice models, alternative reimbursement strategies, expanded roles for physician extenders, and greater utilization of telemedicine.
    • Make recommendations to increase patient access to primary care and address geographic disparities.

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  • Help wanted: Send us your ideas for the Primary Care Rescue Act

    Tags: budget, legislature, family medicine residency program, rural medicine, family physician, payment, graduate medical education

    Tuesday, August 9, 2011 10:15:00 AM
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    As a die-hard fan of the Texas Longhorns, I have no shame in telling you that after last year’s 5-7 record, I was glad the college football season was over. Even though I’m a self-admitted policy wonk and political news junkie, I was equally relieved—even somewhat jubilant—when the 82nd Texas Legislature finally closed up shop and went home. If you followed the frustrating struggle to balance the state budget without additional revenue, and witnessed the resulting cuts to higher education, public education, and health and human services, you might have been just as ready for it to end as I was. At least when they’re not in session, they can’t do any more damage, right?

    Now is not the time to bury our heads in the sand. In fact, the legislative interim is perhaps our best opportunity to formulate and articulate our most effective arguments for renewed investment in Texas’ primary care infrastructure. We can document the ill effects of the drastic reduction in state support for graduate medical education, especially in family medicine residency training, and we can illustrate the broken promise of access to primary care physicians for underserved communities made manifest by the 76-percent cut to the state’s Physician Education Loan Repayment Program.

    And now is the time to begin preparations for a major initiative in the next legislative session. In the late ’80s, rural medicine in Texas was in terrible need of state investment. Health care organizations and advocates rallied around a broad set of goals encompassed in what was called the Omnibus Rural Healthcare Rescue Act, which the Legislature passed in 1989. The law created the Center for Rural Health Initiatives and the Office of Rural Health Care, and it contained tort reforms, benefits for rural hospitals, several reforms to strengthen the state’s trauma care infrastructure, and new recruitment and training programs for primary care physicians. Family medicine won funding for third-year clerkships, among other valuable reforms.

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  • Without investing in physician training, health care bill creates aims without the means

    Tags: budget, family medicine residency program, health care reform, medical home, legislature, family physician, payment

    Wednesday, June 1, 2011 4:15:00 AM
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    An important piece of legislation designed to improve quality and lower costs in our fractured and inefficient health care system has received a second chance in the Special Session after dying in the House when time ran out on the 82nd Texas Legislature. However, because of other actions taken by our legislators that defund primary care residency training and other programs to bolster the physician workforce now and in the future, Senate Bill 8’s laudable goals are left without the means to achieve them.

    The overarching goal of S.B. 8 is to reverse the negative trend in our health care system, to bend the cost curve by testing and implementing various performance-based payment methods that provide incentives for improved patient outcomes. It achieves this through two key mechanisms: the creation of health care collaboratives and the creation of the Texas Institute of Health Care Quality and Efficiency.

    As envisioned in the bill, health care collaboratives clinically integrate physicians, hospitals, diagnostic labs, imaging centers, and other health care providers, aligning financial incentives to keep patients healthy and out of the hospital and emergency room. They are designed to move the delivery system away from a fee-for-service based system—where physicians and hospitals are paid for quantity of services over quality—to one in which doctors, hospitals, and other providers are accountable for the overall care of the patient and the total cost of the care provided.

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  • Can the state shift the balance of power in GME?

    Tags: budget, legislature, family medicine residency program, graduate medical education

    Thursday, March 10, 2011 5:30:00 AM
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    Should medical schools that receive state support for residency training be expected to produce the kinds of physicians Texas needs to ensure a cost-effective, high-quality, well-coordinated, more equitable health care delivery system? That’s the policy question posed by a Texas Tribune news article from March 10, 2011, “Budget Rider Would Emphasize Primary Care.”

    The budget rider in question would concentrate state support for graduate medical education by paying for only the first three years of residency training, rather than supporting training in years four through seven, some part of which are required for subspecialties. The idea is controversial, and of course opposed by many academic health centers and by the Texas Medical Association, but it’s exactly the kind of reform to medical education that’s gathering momentum across the country.

    The recently published 20th report of the Council on Graduate Medical Education proposes that a major culprit behind the declining interest in primary care among medical students is the “hidden curriculum” found in academic health centers that favors specialty care provided in the hospital setting over primary care. How did this “hidden curriculum” come to be? Because GME programs at large teaching hospitals have evolved to meet the needs of the academic health center rather than the general population.

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