Community-based Health Care Extension ServiceIn a recent editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine an organizational model with the potential to support primary care offices in addressing the enormous challenge of coordinating care for Medicare beneficiaries was described. HQP has many attributes and functional capabilities in common with a "Community-based health care extension service." The concept as articulated by David S. Meyers, MD and Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, leaders at AHRQ, in the editorial "Primary Care: Too Important to Fail" (Feb 17, 2009) is one that merits serious consideration. Quoting from their piece; "Once we begin to examine how to assist primary care practices in transforming into fully functioning medical homes, we find that few small- or medium-sized practices (more than 75% of primary care practices in 2006 employed 5 or fewer physicians [5]) have any infrastructure to support quality improvement. Small primary care practices are unable to support full-time quality improvement officers, chief information officers, social workers, health educators, mental health professionals, and care coordinators. A community could support this enterprise. Therefore, a community-based health care extension service may play an important enabling role in the transformation and sustainability of primary care..." |
