Powering-Up Primary Care Teams: Advanced Team Care With In-Room Support

The Article in Brief

Powering-Up Primary Care Teams: Advanced Team Care With In-Room Support

Thomas Bodenheimer , and colleagues

Background Primary care teams are underpowered because they do not maximally redistribute team functions, causing physicians to perform time-consuming clerical work. This commentary describes "advanced team care with in-room support" as a way to power-up primary care teams.

What This Study Found In this special report, the authors argue that the current primary care team paradigm is underpowered, in that most of the administrative responsibility still falls mainly on the physician. Jobs not requiring a medical education, such as entering data into electronic health records, should not be handled by physicians and advanced practitioners. The authors propose a model where a physician with 2 or 3 highly trained care team coordinators (CTCs) share patient responsibilities, with the CTCs organizing the visit, completing documentation, and coordinating follow-up care, and the physician handling components of the visit that require more complex decision making. There is evidence that this model improves patient care, reduces physician burnout, and is financially sustainable.

Implications

• The authors identify a number of themes, or mindsets, such as the idea that technology can replace people, that are barriers to implementation of these models in family medicine.