| By Catherine MacLean
Recently, the CIPCI Team visited an historic Hartford landmark, the Isham-Terry House. Our team hoped to learn a bit about one “Primary Care Office of the Past” as a complement to our work on the Primary Care Office of the Future.
| By Rebecca Andrews, MD, FACP
Ah, June, the month when medical students graduate after 20 years or more of education. They are finally ready to start their lives as doctors and enter the hands-on portion of their trade, residency.
I've often said that the best way to ensure the failure of pretty much anything meant to help patients is to have extremely smart, well intentioned professionals – administrators, consultants, educators, entrepreneurs, marketers, payers, providers and/or researchers – build it without talking, and listening, to patients at every step along the way.
What is innovation? There are many answers to that question, not all of them helpful. It’s more than a new idea, process or tool. It’s more than improvement, more than being creative, and more than commercialization.
READ MOREProcess mapping is a major part of our work on the Anatomy and Physiology of Primary Care – it gives an immediate visual sense of the steps involved in care as well as the people involved in each step. The process maps also allow us to document three different aspects of visit time, which we characterize as value-added (or not) from the patient perspective: Value-Added, Essential Non-Value-Added, and Non-Value-Added.
READ MOREClearly understanding how the structure of primary care practices affect their function – what we term the anatomy and physiology of primary care – is a logical foundation for any transformation effort.
READ MORE| By Thom Walsh, PhD
Leading in healthcare today is like standing in two canoes, one for each foot, with the canoes heading in opposite directions. One boat, with a setting based on the assumption of more is better, heads in the direction of more healthcare. The other, with a new setting, heads toward better healthcare.
READ MORE| By Jonathan Lis
I am about to begin medical school after working for over a year as a research assistant at CIPCI. Before coming to CIPCI, my view of the healthcare system didn’t extend far beyond calling it complicated, specialized, and expensive. True, but oversimplified.
READ MORE| By Jeri Hepworth, PhD
We know that we don’t have enough primary care physicians and that insufficient numbers of medical students and residents are choosing primary care careers. If we care about the health of populations and the unsustainable costs of healthcare, we have to change these trends quickly and increase the number of primary care physicians.
“The Four Pillars for Primary Care” provides consistent language to help all of us advocate for the changes that are needed to develop an appropriate physician workforce.
READ MORE| By Rebecca Andrews, MD, FACP
I attended an inspirational talk given by the Distinguished Professor in Women’s Health award winner, Dr. Melissa McNeil, at the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) annual conference. Dr. McNeil gave the proverbial work-life balance talk with a unique perspective, which she called “Life Lessons Learned.” As a primary care physician, a mom, and a person with too many interests to count, balancing my life seems like a constant transfer of time from one area to another. I think her points are excellent in general, but especially for primary care providers who are trying to survive the mountain of paperwork and patient needs.
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