Author: trident500
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Patient-Centered Medical Home Transformation: 9 Key Hurdles for Physician Practices To Overcome
In the first of several conversations with Metcare of Florida chief executives on its continuing medical home pilot with Humana, CEO Mike Earley and President and COO Dr. Jose Guethon describe Metcare’s longstanding commitment to the management of care transitions for its Medicare patients, how its 10 medical home practices keep a handle on patient…
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Shared Savings in the Medical Home
The patient-centered medical home is at the heart of Mesa County, Colorado’s shared savings model, explains David West, M.D., a hospitalist, family physician and healthcare consultant from Grand Junction, Colorado. Dr. West describes how the shared savings model can be adapted across markets, including the conditions and factors that must be present for this approach…
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Child and Youth Mental Health Service Referrals: Physicians’ Knowledge of Mental Health Services and Perceptions of a Centralized Intake Model
Objective: We conducted a survey to assess physicians’ attitudes and knowledge of mental health services and centralized intake services for mental health. Method: A survey consisting of 51 questions was sent to 735 physicians in active practice within the catchment area of a regional centralized intake for child and youth mental health services. The survey…
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Assessing and Predicting Health Risk in the Elderly
Even though more than a third of the elderly are online, they’re not necessarily using the Internet to seek health assistance, explains Marcia Wade, M.D., F.C.C.P., M.M.M., senior medical director at Aetna Medicare. That’s why Aetna delivers its health risk assessment for the elderly in an alternate format while making available other Web-based tools to…
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Multi-Payor Medical Home Programs: Addressing Funding and Organizational Challenges
A year into the Colorado multi-payor medical home pilot whose practices provide care to 30,000 patients, Julie Schilz, B.S.N., M.B.A., prescribes a single tool that can help transform practices, improve quality and deliver evidence-based care. It’s NOT an EHR, says the manager of the Improving Performance in Practice and Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) initiatives for…
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Health Coaching Evaluation: Measuring the ROI on Healthcare Utilization and Costs
The dismal economy of 2009 has been a bright spot for health coaching and other health improvement programs, notes Dr. Jim Reynolds, chief medical officer for Health Fitness Corporation. Dr. Reynolds also compares early results from a Massachusetts’ smoking cessation program for Medicaid beneficiaries with outcomes in commercial populations, and describes what Year 1 of…
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Implementing and Maintaining a Researchable Database from Electronic Medical Records: A Perspective from an Academic Family Medicine Department
Electronic medical records (EMRs) are posited as a tool for improving practice, policy and research in primary healthcare.
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Nurse-Case Manager Collaboration Reduces Avoidable Readmissions
Case managers and advanced practice nurses in Aetna’s Transitional Care pilot have also successfully partnered to reduce readmissions. Dr. Randall Krakauer, national medical director, Medicare at Aetna, describes the key focus and the complementary roles that reduced 90-day readmissions by 25 percent. Dr. Krakauer also weighs in on the pros and cons of bundled payments,…
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Developing and Maintaining a Population Research Registry to Support Primary Healthcare Research
What did we do? This paper describes the creation of a population research registry as part of an information system to support primary healthcare (PHC) research in British Columbia. The population registry includes all residents of the province who were either eligible to use or actually used healthcare services, together with demographic, geographic, health status,…
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Achieving NCQA’s Patient-Centered Medical Home Recognition
Grand Valley Health Plan’s (GVHP) workgroup approach helps the staff model HMO to successfully disseminate workflow changes resulting from its NCQA medical home recognition process, explains Barbara Luskin, GVHP quality manager, and also created location champions in the process. Luskin describes how GVHP demonstrates compliance with the most challenging NCQA “must-pass” elements and shares GVHP’s…