TY - JOUR
T1 - The chief primary care medical officer
T2 - Restoring continuity
AU - Doohan, Noemi
AU - DeVoe, Jennifer
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Annals of Family Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The year 2016 marked the 20th anniversary of the hospitalist profession, with more than 50,000 physicians identifying as hospitalists. The Achilles heel of hospitalist medicine, however, is discontinuity. Despite many current payment and delivery systems rewarding this discontinuity and severing long-term relationships between patient and primary care teams at the hospital door, primary care does not stop being important when a person is admitted to the hospital. The notion of a broken primary care continuum is not an academic construct, it causes real harm to patients. As a step toward fixing the discontinuity in our health care systems, we propose that every hospital needs a Chief Primary Care Medical Officer (CPCMO), an expert in practice across the spectrum of care. The CPCMO can lead hospital efforts to create systems that ensure primary care’s continuum is complete, while strengthening physician collaboration across specialties, and moving toward achieving the Quadruple Aim of enhancing patient experience, improving population health, reducing costs, and improving the work life of health care providers. For hospitals operating on value-based payment structures, anticipated improvement in measurable outcomes such as decreased length of stay, decreased readmission rates, improved transitions of care, improved patient satisfaction, improved access to primary care, and improved patient health, will enhance the rate of return on the hospital’s investment. The speciality of family medicine should reevaluate our purpose, and reembrace our mission as personal physicians by championing the creation of Chief Primary Care Medical Officers.
AB - The year 2016 marked the 20th anniversary of the hospitalist profession, with more than 50,000 physicians identifying as hospitalists. The Achilles heel of hospitalist medicine, however, is discontinuity. Despite many current payment and delivery systems rewarding this discontinuity and severing long-term relationships between patient and primary care teams at the hospital door, primary care does not stop being important when a person is admitted to the hospital. The notion of a broken primary care continuum is not an academic construct, it causes real harm to patients. As a step toward fixing the discontinuity in our health care systems, we propose that every hospital needs a Chief Primary Care Medical Officer (CPCMO), an expert in practice across the spectrum of care. The CPCMO can lead hospital efforts to create systems that ensure primary care’s continuum is complete, while strengthening physician collaboration across specialties, and moving toward achieving the Quadruple Aim of enhancing patient experience, improving population health, reducing costs, and improving the work life of health care providers. For hospitals operating on value-based payment structures, anticipated improvement in measurable outcomes such as decreased length of stay, decreased readmission rates, improved transitions of care, improved patient satisfaction, improved access to primary care, and improved patient health, will enhance the rate of return on the hospital’s investment. The speciality of family medicine should reevaluate our purpose, and reembrace our mission as personal physicians by championing the creation of Chief Primary Care Medical Officers.
KW - Continuity of patient care
KW - Hospital administration
KW - Primary health care
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85023643770&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1370/afm.2078
DO - 10.1370/afm.2078
M3 - Article
C2 - 28694275
AN - SCOPUS:85023643770
SN - 1544-1709
VL - 15
SP - 366
EP - 371
JO - Annals of family medicine
JF - Annals of family medicine
IS - 4
ER -