Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Content
    • Current Issue
    • Early Access
    • Multimedia
    • Podcast
    • Collections
    • Past Issues
    • Articles by Subject
    • Articles by Type
    • Supplements
    • Plain Language Summaries
    • Calls for Papers
  • Info for
    • Authors
    • Reviewers
    • Job Seekers
    • Media
  • About
    • Annals of Family Medicine
    • Editorial Staff & Boards
    • Sponsoring Organizations
    • Copyrights & Permissions
    • Announcements
  • Engage
    • Engage
    • e-Letters (Comments)
    • Subscribe
    • Podcast
    • E-mail Alerts
    • Journal Club
    • RSS
    • Annals Forum (Archive)
  • Contact
    • Contact Us
  • Careers

User menu

  • My alerts

Search

  • Advanced search
Annals of Family Medicine
  • My alerts
Annals of Family Medicine

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Content
    • Current Issue
    • Early Access
    • Multimedia
    • Podcast
    • Collections
    • Past Issues
    • Articles by Subject
    • Articles by Type
    • Supplements
    • Plain Language Summaries
    • Calls for Papers
  • Info for
    • Authors
    • Reviewers
    • Job Seekers
    • Media
  • About
    • Annals of Family Medicine
    • Editorial Staff & Boards
    • Sponsoring Organizations
    • Copyrights & Permissions
    • Announcements
  • Engage
    • Engage
    • e-Letters (Comments)
    • Subscribe
    • Podcast
    • E-mail Alerts
    • Journal Club
    • RSS
    • Annals Forum (Archive)
  • Contact
    • Contact Us
  • Careers
  • Follow annalsfm on Twitter
  • Visit annalsfm on Facebook
OtherReflectionsA

The Teamlet Model of Primary Care

Thomas Bodenheimer and Brian Yoshio Laing
The Annals of Family Medicine September 2007, 5 (5) 457-461; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.731
Thomas Bodenheimer
MD
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Brian Yoshio Laing
BS
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • eLetters
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Article Figures & Data

Additional Files

  • Annals Journal Club Selection:

    Sep/Oct 2007

    The Annals Journal Club is designed to encourage a learning community of those seeking to improve health care and health through enhanced primary care. Additional information is available on the Journal Club home page.

    The Annals of Family Medicine encourages readers to develop the learning community of those seeking to improve health care and health through enhanced primary care. You can participate by conducting a RADICAL journal club, and sharing the results of your discussions in the Annals online discussion for the featured articles. RADICAL is an acronym for: Read, Ask, Discuss, Inquire, Collaborate, Act, and Learn. The word radical also indicates the need to engage diverse participants in thinking critically about important issues affecting primary care, and then acting on those discussions.1

    Articles for Discussion

    • Bodenheimer T, Laing BY. The teamlet model of primary care. Ann Fam Med. 2007;5(5):457-461.
    • Zweifler J. The missing link: improving quality with a chronic disease management intervention for the primary care office. Ann Fam Med. 2007;5(5):453-456.

    Discussion Tips

    Consider these articles in the context of your own practice, of calls for practice reform, and of calls for payment reform. Because these are essays rather than research articles, it is not easy to critique the methods. It is important, however, to consider the logic of their arguments and the degree to which they are grounded in both current reality and future possibility.

    Discussion Questions

    • What are the questions addressed by these essays? Why do the questions matter?
    • What changes do each propose?
    • How might these changes be feasibly implemented in your practice?
    • What would be the intended consequences of these changes in practice organization?
    • What are the potential unintended consequences?
    • What health care system changes would be needed to enable these changes?
    • How could patients be engaged?
    • What other changes do these proposals stimulate you to envision?
    • How do these ideas relate to the Future of Family Medicine2 proposal for a New Model practice?3
    • How do they relate to the idea of the Patient-Centered Medical Home recently endorsed by 4 professional organizations?4
    • Do such initiatives as the TransforMED National Demonstration Project and Preparing the Personal Physician for Practice (P4)5 or the Prescription for Health6 project make such changes seem more feasible?

    Reference

    1. Stange KC, Miller WL, McLellan LA, et al. Annals journal club: It�s time to get RADICAL. Ann Fam Med. 2006;4:196-197. Available at: http://annfammed.org/cgi/content/full/4/3/196.
    2. Martin JC, Avant RF, Bowman MA, et al. The future of family medicine: a collaborative project of the family medicine community. Ann Fam Med. 2004;2(Suppl 1):S3-S32.
    3. Task Force 1 Writing Group, Green LA, Graham R, et al. Task Force 1. Report of the Task Force on Patient Expectations, Core Values, Reintegration, and the New Model of family medicine. Ann Fam Med. 2004;2(Suppl 1):S33-S50.
    4. American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American College of Physicians (ACP), American Osteopathic Association (AOA). Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home. March, 2007. http://www.medicalhomeinfo.org/Joint%20Statement.pdf. Accessed August 30, 2007.
    5. TransforMED. http://www.transformed.com/. Accessed August 30, 2007.
    6. Prescription for Health. http://www.prescriptionforhealth.org/. Accessed August 30, 2007.
  • The Article in Brief

    The Teamlet Model of Primary Care

    Thomas Bodenheimer, MD , and colleagues

    Background The 15-minute doctor visit must be eliminated as the standard in primary care, according to this essay. The authors propose that it be replaced by a teamlet (little team) model, which has 2 main features: (1) the patient visit involves 2 caregivers--a clinician (doctor, nurse-practitioner, or physician�s assistant) and a health coach--rather than only the clinician; and (2) the 15-minute visit is expanded to include a previsit by the coach, a visit by the clinician together with the coach, a postvisit by the coach, and between-visit care by the coach. According to the authors, the teamlet model is a blueprint for addressing some of the serious problems facing primary care: inadequate visit time to provide all recommended acute, chronic, and preventive care; doctor and patient dissatisfaction with the rushed atmosphere of many visits; and inadequate quality of care that may be provided by stressed primary care practices. Pilot projects are underway to test whether this model of care is practical.

PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

The Annals of Family Medicine: 5 (5)
The Annals of Family Medicine: 5 (5)
Vol. 5, Issue 5
1 Sep 2007
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
  • In Brief
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on Annals of Family Medicine.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
The Teamlet Model of Primary Care
(Your Name) has sent you a message from Annals of Family Medicine
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the Annals of Family Medicine web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
3 + 14 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.
Citation Tools
The Teamlet Model of Primary Care
Thomas Bodenheimer, Brian Yoshio Laing
The Annals of Family Medicine Sep 2007, 5 (5) 457-461; DOI: 10.1370/afm.731

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Get Permissions
Share
The Teamlet Model of Primary Care
Thomas Bodenheimer, Brian Yoshio Laing
The Annals of Family Medicine Sep 2007, 5 (5) 457-461; DOI: 10.1370/afm.731
Twitter logo Facebook logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • INTRODUCTION
    • WHAT IS A TEAMLET?
    • THE TEAMLET MODEL
    • POTENTIAL CHALLENGES
    • TRAINING HEALTH COACHES
    • FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY OF THE MODEL
    • IMPLEMENTING PARTS OF THE MODEL
    • Footnotes
    • REFERENCES
  • Figures & Data
  • eLetters
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • PubMed
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • Primary Care Practice Characteristics Associated With Medical Assistant Staffing Ratios
  • High-Performing Teamlets in Primary Care: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis
  • Primary care micro-teams: an international systematic review of patient and healthcare professional perspectives
  • Impact of primary care usual provider type and provider interdependence on outcomes for patients with diabetes: a cohort study
  • Delivering High-Quality Primary Care Requires Work That Is Worthwhile for Medical Assistants
  • Primary care micro-teams: a protocol for an international systematic review to describe and examine the opportunities and challenges of implementation for patients and healthcare professionals
  • Associations of primary care structures with polypharmacy and patient-reported indicators in patients with complex multimorbidity: a multicentre cross-sectional study in Japan
  • Financial Incentives for Medical Assistants: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Bonus Structures, Motivation, and Population Health Quality Measures
  • Care Practices to Promote Patient Engagement in VA Primary Care: Factors Associated With High Performance
  • Team Configurations, Efficiency, and Family Physician Burnout
  • Roles and Functions of Community Health Workers in Primary Care
  • 'The Hand on the Doorknob: Visit Agenda Setting by Complex Patients and Their Primary Care Physicians
  • Family Medicine Panel Size with Care Teams: Impact on Quality
  • Team-Based Care Offers a New World of Value
  • Teamlets in Primary Care: Enhancing the Patient and Clinician Experience
  • Health Coaching by Medical Assistants to Improve Control of Diabetes, Hypertension, and Hyperlipidemia in Low-Income Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial
  • Patient-Centered Medical Home Initiative Produced Modest Economic Results For Veterans Health Administration, 2010-12
  • Real-World Implementation and Outcomes of Health Behavior and Mental Health Assessment
  • Patterns of Relating Between Physicians and Medical Assistants in Small Family Medicine Offices
  • Team Structure and Culture Are Associated With Lower Burnout in Primary Care
  • Association of Patient Recall, Satisfaction, and Adherence to Content of an Electronic Health Record (EHR)-Generated After Visit Summary: A Randomized Clinical Trial
  • Cost-effectiveness of depression case management in small practices
  • In Search of Joy in Practice: A Report of 23 High-Functioning Primary Care Practices
  • Care for Patients with Chronic Nonmalignant Pain with and without Chronic Opioid Prescriptions: A Report from the Cincinnati Area Research Group (CARinG) Network
  • Evaluating a Culturally and Linguistically Competent Health Coach Intervention for Chinese-American Patients With Diabetes
  • The FEeding Support Team (FEST) randomised, controlled feasibility trial of proactive and reactive telephone support for breastfeeding women living in disadvantaged areas
  • Information Chaos in Primary Care: Implications for Physician Performance and Patient Safety
  • Coordination of Health Behavior Counseling in Primary Care
  • The Rural Older Adult Memory (ROAM) Study: A Practice-based Intervention to Improve Dementia Screening and Diagnosis
  • Primary Care: Current Problems And Proposed Solutions
  • Summary of the National Demonstration Project and Recommendations for the Patient-Centered Medical Home
  • A Medical Assistant-Based Program to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Primary Care
  • The Medical Home: Growing Evidence to Support a New Approach to Primary Care
  • Hypotheses and Questions
  • In This Issue: Risk and Care Management
  • Annals Journal Club: Novel Staffing for Improved Patient Disease Management
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • When the Death of a Colleague Meets Academic Publishing: A Call for Compassion
  • Let’s Dare to Be Vulnerable: Crossing the Self-Disclosure Rubicon
  • Not Like They Used To: The Decline of Procedural Competency in Medical Training
Show more Reflections

Similar Articles

Subjects

  • Other topics:
    • Quality improvement
    • Organizational / practice change
    • Patient-centered medical home

Content

  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
  • Early Access
  • Plain-Language Summaries
  • Multimedia
  • Podcast
  • Articles by Type
  • Articles by Subject
  • Supplements
  • Calls for Papers

Info for

  • Authors
  • Reviewers
  • Job Seekers
  • Media

Engage

  • E-mail Alerts
  • e-Letters (Comments)
  • RSS
  • Journal Club
  • Submit a Manuscript
  • Subscribe
  • Family Medicine Careers

About

  • About Us
  • Editorial Board & Staff
  • Sponsoring Organizations
  • Copyrights & Permissions
  • Contact Us
  • eLetter/Comments Policy

© 2025 Annals of Family Medicine