Today's post focuses on the third of a 5-phase continuum. If you're joining the discussion today for the first time, please refer back to our July 20th post for the big-picture overview.
Phase 3 of the "beyond EHRs" continuum is prepare for team delivery of care. Team delivery of care is being piloted all across the country. For some time now, we have been seeing and hearing of shared savings programs and accountable care organizations. Those programs and entities may have led us to believe team-based care is primarily for hospitals where we perceive that team care is the norm.
Let's pause there for a moment and consider an important change management principle found throughout health care reform: change will be pilot tested in select environments then applied system wide. This means that in due course, sooner than you may think, team delivery will affect your business. Another truism readily observed: pilot programs will be financially incentivized to create momentum but in the end health care reform will drive "higher quality lower cost". Get involved in pilot projects!
A recent pilot project that is quickly and decisively changing anyone's view that team-based care delivery may only be for hospitals and health systems is the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative, from CMS Innovations. Effectively, the CPC Initiative is moving patient-centered medical homes into the offices of Primary Care Physicians. Once again, this is a project we are following closely as part of our National Eye Care Communications Project. If you haven't already done so, read our post from June 13. It touches more thoroughly on this initiative.
Our big takeaway here is one word: prepare. As your colleague Dr. David Chandler said in his July 16 commentary, "...We've had our heads buried in the sand too long already." The profession is forcibly in a reactive mode. Without forethought and preparation, independent ECPs will lose out on many opportunities to be involved in team delivery of care. We've said it before, teams want eye care participation. That's not the problem. The question is whether the ECPs will be private practice or employed doctors.
Prepare your business for team delivery of care!
Let's pause there for a moment and consider an important change management principle found throughout health care reform: change will be pilot tested in select environments then applied system wide. This means that in due course, sooner than you may think, team delivery will affect your business. Another truism readily observed: pilot programs will be financially incentivized to create momentum but in the end health care reform will drive "higher quality lower cost". Get involved in pilot projects!
A recent pilot project that is quickly and decisively changing anyone's view that team-based care delivery may only be for hospitals and health systems is the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative, from CMS Innovations. Effectively, the CPC Initiative is moving patient-centered medical homes into the offices of Primary Care Physicians. Once again, this is a project we are following closely as part of our National Eye Care Communications Project. If you haven't already done so, read our post from June 13. It touches more thoroughly on this initiative.
Our big takeaway here is one word: prepare. As your colleague Dr. David Chandler said in his July 16 commentary, "...We've had our heads buried in the sand too long already." The profession is forcibly in a reactive mode. Without forethought and preparation, independent ECPs will lose out on many opportunities to be involved in team delivery of care. We've said it before, teams want eye care participation. That's not the problem. The question is whether the ECPs will be private practice or employed doctors.
Prepare your business for team delivery of care!
Alistair Jackson, M.Ed.
Jim Grue, O.D.
Jim Grue, O.D.
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