When “Patient-Centered” is Not Enough: A Call for Community-Centered Medicine

Juliana E. Morris

doi:10.1370/afm.2335

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Community-Centered care
Jack A Westfall

Published on: 01 February 2019

Published on: (1 February 2019)
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Community-Centered care
Jack A Westfall, Physician
Bravo to Dr Morris for this narrative of her journey mixing community organizing and primary care. The roots of family medicine are deep in the counterculture of community organizing and community health. Somewhere along the way we lost of bit of this community work as we became focused on the exam room. The exam room has become the primary metric for physician production. Reimbursement is for exam room work. While lots o...
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Bravo to Dr Morris for this narrative of her journey mixing community organizing and primary care. The roots of family medicine are deep in the counterculture of community organizing and community health. Somewhere along the way we lost of bit of this community work as we became focused on the exam room. The exam room has become the primary metric for physician production. Reimbursement is for exam room work. While lots of great thought, and work, and care occur in the exam room, there is a whole world out there in which our patients spend the majority of their time. Looking there, spending time in community can identify many factors in need of work and time and thought. And spending time outside the exam room may be an anecdote for the malaise (aka burnout) that many of our colleagues are suffering. I suppose it now demands we find funding and resource and support for creating some value based reimbursement for Family Medicine, rather than just more exam room visits. The Folsom Report from 1967 and the rethink of the Folsom Report in 2014 provide a framework for considering policy changes. Communities of Solution can build asset sheds to support Community-Centered care.
http://www.annfammed.org/content/10/3/250.full.pdf+html
https://www.jabfm.org/content/jabfp/26/3/239.full.pdf
Thanks for this aspirational story of community.
Competing interests: None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.