No Metrics Needed
On May 30, the Alliance for Health Reform hosted an event titled “Patient-Centered Medical Homes: The Promise and the Reality”. Here are some highlights:
- In a climate of high expectations for the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model, a panel of experts recently cautioned that results such as improved patient health outcomes and reduced care costs won’t happen overnight. For the new care delivery model to work, physician practices should be prepared to devote the necessary time and resources to ensure it succeeds.
- It’s essential to realize, however, that just as the transformation process itself can’t reasonably be accomplished in a matter of weeks – and possibly even longer – the results of that transformation won’t become evident right away.
- Gibson noted that comparisons between different medical homes likely won’t provide insight because the patient populations will vary greatly, as will the skills of the medical professionals who work in a given care team.
Can they hedge their bets anymore? You need to give it as much time as it takes to work (and go broke in the process). You need to devote the proper resources. And you cannot compare your PCMH to anyone else. In other words, it is the perfect scam. Can anyone else see the irony? YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE METRICS WHEN INSTALLING A BULLSHIT SYSTEM BASED ON METRICS!
Here is what one doctor said on the comment section on the AAFP site:
Let’s see: no improvement in outcomes; longer working hours; no increase in revenue; 15-20% decrease in patient access . . .
Yup, that is what our great leaders are selling us in to. Not Direct Primary Care. No, this crap.
I’ve said this a million times, unless people are held responsible for their lousy health habits, nothing will change in this country. Doesn’t matter if one calls it a Drs. office, medical home or what have you. The ivory tower bastards are clueless what goes on in middle America. One can lead a horse to water but one can’t make them drink. I’ve spent 26 years trying to “educate” folks on good “health habits” and more often than not, go unheeded. Yeah, I’m gratified when someone makes changes and has success with disease risk modification but it’s the exception not the rule. Students need to stay away from Family Medicine. The influx of NP’S and the fact that there will be no more hospital practice due to hospitalists, will stagnate already meager compensation. Don’t do it you’ll have a miserable low paying career.
How do you plan to hold people responsible and who decides the criteria for irresponsible behavior? It sounds Orwellian.
Translation: “We hope that by the time people figure out it doesn’t work we will have moved on to other work, retirement, or death.”
After all, it worked for the people who lit the fuse on the Social Security time bomb under Ronald Reagan. Nobody even remembers the role Greenspan played in that, or that it was the result of the sought-after “bipartisan agreement” that we so cherish. Bipartisan agreements are basically two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner.
BTW, if we have to devote time and resources, then pay us for our time and resources.
Please insert in my previous post after 19%:
That’s what they mean by “physician practices should be prepared to devote the necessary time and resources to ensure it succeeds.” Pay through the nose to play.
Thanks.
Glad you brought this to everyone’s attention. The doctor you quoted from the AAFP web site is my business partner.
If you read the transcript of the meeting, it gets even better. The chosen poster child for the PCMH, a family physician from Ohio, reports that since chnaging his practice to an NCQA-certified medical home, he works 14-16 hours every day. During the first year, revenue went down 5% and expenses went up 19%.
Where do I sign up?
I actually laughed out loud reading this piece. This hilarious, gobbledygook gibberish is exactly what FP has become. Read this med students! Stay away from these idiots, they are contagious.