Report on Financing the New Model of Family Medicine

We are not aware of any research data that correlates increasing patient volume with increasing malpractice risk in the Family Medicine setting. The New Model of practice which was proposed by the Future of Family Medicine project would actually decrease the number of patients seen by the family physician per unit time, while increasing the number of patients cared for by the multidisciplinary primary care team. The New Model also emphasizes quality of care and patient safety, and puts into place processes that will assure that these are achieved. The microeconomic analysis of the financial impact of the New Model under the current reimbursement system posits a 5% decrease in malpractice premiums, anticipating that New Model practice characteristics will decrease malpractice risk(see Table 1b in the paper). Of course, this assumption will need to be tested "in vivo" in the proposed national demonstration project

Competing interests:   None declared