The following appeared a little while ago.
Govt seeks GP advice on ‘medical homes’
The Federal Health Minister wants “expert input” on patients registering with individual GP practices as part of a drive to tie patients closer to a “medical home”.
Marking the conclusion of last week’s Family Doctor Week, Tanya Plibersek lavished praise on GPs, describing them as the “backbone of Australia’s world-class universal health system”.
“It is their genuine, enduring, and intimate relationship with patients that helps make their clinical impact so powerful. That relationship allows family doctors to truly understand their patients, plan their care carefully, and even pre-empt their health needs.”
She said the government was seeking expert input on the “medical home” concept where patients receive much of their ongoing care through a single GP practice.
“That clinic then becomes responsible for the patient, providing access to a greater range of services aimed at keeping them healthy and out of hospital,” she said.
The minister said she wanted expert feedback — including from GPs — on whether the plan would improve patient care.
There have been various models proposed with the aim of strengthening cradle-to-grave care. The RACGP this year unveiled a blueprint in its budget submission calling for cash payments of $165 to practices for every patient who voluntarily enrols.
More here:
There are discussions of this area on the blog going back to 2007.
Here are some recent links.
and here:
(This is an especially useful link). The article cited is found here:
and here:
and here:
These links all seem to suggest the Patient Centred Medical Home (PCMH) approach - especially if enabled by quality Health IT to assist with care co-ordination and a patient portal to assist with patient access can be a pretty good way to go.
It is a way better idea for investment than the PCEHR, which, if you think about it is not really the tool to make a PCMH work optimally as the practitioner does not have guaranteed access to all relevant information.
The point that it is important to make is that the PCMH concept is not just about patient registration but also about all the other infrastructure that is needed to make it work well.
As a last point if the Minister wants to know more this looks like a great place to start:
with all of 70 references!
David.
No comments:
Post a Comment