Contents tagged with practice transformation
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Payment Reform recap: Demonstrating value
Following the most basic model for success in business means minimizing overhead and maximizing revenues, Dr. Mark Laitos pointed out at TAFP’s Payment Reform Summit last Saturday. For doctors in private practice and other health care providers, this means billing for as many relative value units, or RVUs, as possible at the best conversion rate, and maximizing ancillary revenue, when possible.
And while this strategy is simple enough, Laitos said it has reduced the “proud field” of medicine to “conveyor belt medicine.” Worse, as payers – including health insurers, employers, and patients to some extent – strive to minimize RVUs, the solution to the cost crisis in a fee-for-service system is to slash payment to physicians and deny care to patients.
Of course neither patients nor doctors (nor the organizations that advocate for them) would allow this to happen considering the scale needed to rein in escalating health care costs. The solution, then, as speaker after speaker suggested, is to trade the volume-based model for a value-based model. This is also the cover story of the latest Texas Family Physician magazine.
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Bookmark another great member blog – Practice Transformation with Dr. Gerdes
“Real Life Practice Transformation,” a blog by TAFP President Melissa Gerdes, M.D., for AAFP’s Family Practice Management journal, gives physicians advice on implementing aspects of the medical home. Gerdes’ practice emerged as a star of the initial TransforMED National Demonstration Project, making her the perfect physician to share her experiences—good and bad—with the larger AAFP community.
The TransforMED model builds on the physician-patient relationship already cultivated in primary care, while adding new technology and approaches to help practices better serve the needs of patients and practices. The basics of the model focus on increasing patients’ access to care and information, becoming more efficient in practice management, enhancing practice-based services, expanding the use of health information technology, providing better care management, improving quality and safety, coordinating care in a more effective way, and supporting practice-based team care.
If it sounds like a lot, it is, and the NDP proved that practices need support from the entire staff and their patients to start implementing some of the recommendations. Reading Gerdes’ posts is a good first step to evaluating what the TransforMED recommendations can do for your practice.
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AAFP’s two-year practice redesign demonstration project concludes
AAFP’s two-year practice redesign demonstration project concludes
Texas practice among “elite” of TransforMED
After two years of tests and evaluation, the TransforMED National Demonstration … more