Building on the experiences of three medical practices, a nonprofit group hopes to help other primary care practices put in place what it says is a proven high-performance, lower-cost model.
The Peterson Center on Healthcare, a New York-based nonprofit, says its new initiative can help transform primary care based on its success at three clinics: the Mount Sinai Doctors Faculty Practice in New York, Internal Medicine of St. Luke’s in Chesterfield, Missouri and the Essentia Health-Moorhead Clinic in Moorhead, Minnesota.
The practice sites have begun implementing an operational and management change process with support from their health system leadership, the Peterson Center and a group of national experts in primary care, the center said in an announcement.
After implementing key elements of the model for the past several weeks, early results indicate the practices have improved patient satisfaction, improved quality scores and increased work satisfaction for the care team, according to the Peterson Center.
“We are already seeing benefits, including higher quality outcomes, more time spent between clinicians and patients, and more streamlined administration,” said Niyum Gandhi, chief population health officer at the Mount Sinai Health System.
The Peterson Center is now actively developing processes and tools that other primary care practices can adopt. The delivery model is based on research funded by the center and conducted by Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center. The result is 22 actionable modules that practice teams can implement according to their own goals and patient needs, the center said.
“For most Americans, primary care is their entry point into the healthcare system and it is therefore a critical area to improve the quality of care and reduce costs,” Jeffrey Selberg, the center’s executive director, said in the announcement. “If we can replicate the model efficiently and spread its adoption, the ability to achieve better outcomes and lower costs could be enormous.”
Feeling pressure to reduce costs and improve outcomes, have medical practices thinking further and further outside the box to come up with innovative ways to be more efficient, as FiercePracticeManagement has reported. Primary care is also a major focus when it comes to proposed changes in the Medicare physician fee schedule for 2017.