Contributor: Jane Dubose
Topic: Medicaid, medical homes
A recent report on patient engagement and a separate audit of North Carolina’s famed Medicaid medical home program illustrate just how difficult it is to reach solid conclusions on the value of patient-centered medical homes.
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Contributor: Sheri Sellmeyer
Topic: Primary care, emergency room, medical homes
Here is something that anyone with a child or an elderly parent could have told you: emergency room use is significantly less when patients can see their primary-care providers outside of regular office hours.
That was the conclusion of a study released this week by Health Affairs showing that patients were far less likely to use the ER when they had evening and weekend access to their physicians, and they had a significantly lower rate of unmet medical need than those who didn’t have such access.
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Contributor: Sheri Sellmeyer
Topic: ACOs, Medical homes
The Harvard business professor and healthcare expert Regina Herzlinger is known as an iconoclast who has gotten a lot of things right over the years: She predicted in the 1990s that managed care would alienate consumers and ultimately fail at controlling healthcare inflation, and she has long advocated market-driven, consumer-oriented healthcare.
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Contributer: Sheri Sellmeyer
Topic: Medical homes
Looking for doubts about the viability of medical homes? Check out the February 2012 issue of
The American Journal of Managed Care. Looking for affirmation of medical homes? Check out the March 2012 issue of
The American Journal of Managed Care.
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Contributor: Laura Beerman
Topic: Medical homes
A friend of mine is writing a memoir about the two decades he’s spent working stupid jobs. Toiling in grad school and earning the letters “MFA” after his name didn’t keep him from having to haul barns and park cars, just to make a living before someone would recognize the value of those letters and the talent behind them.
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Contributor: Sheri Sellmeyer
Topic: Concierge medicine
My doctor is going concierge, and if I want to keep seeing her, I have to pony up $1,500 a year extra. On top of insurance and copayments.
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Contributor: Jane DuBose
Topic: Medical Homes
Recently, the National Committee for Quality Assurance confirmed what many of us suspected: there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of primary-care clinicians who are part of patient-centered medical homes.
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