Some facilities are now also using scheduling advocates, charged with facilitating referrals, arranging specialist and diagnostic appointments, and following up with patients to make sure they’ve successfully navigated the health care landscape. Behavioral health specialists and clinical pharmacists are also making their way into physician practices to expand the scope of offerings and decompress the burden on physicians. While these all have an associated cost, changes in the way physicians get paid are making the extra support economical and often necessary to satisfy the requirements under risk-based and fee-for-value contracts. We also predict that practices that choose to eschew the team approach to care will lose a competitive advantage in a health care market that is becoming more and more consumer driven. Patients, as well as providers, see the benefits of highly effective care teams.
Following the Eagles’ dramatic Super Bowl victory, coach Doug Pederson addressed his team in the locker room with these words: “This is a team game. As we’ve said before, an individual can make a difference, but a team makes a miracle.” While we as physicians may easily become jaded by the “miracles” of modern medicine, our patients have not yet lost hope in our ability to deliver on the promise of victory. To meet their expectations, we need to acknowledge that we will no longer be able to make it into the end zone alone; instead — in the game of modern medicine — we’ll need a team to take us there.
- Young RA, Burge SK, Kumar KA, Wilson JM, Ortiz DF. A Time-Motion Study of Primary Care Physicians’ Work in the Electronic Health Record Era. Fam Med. 2018 February;50(2):91-9.
- Arndt BG, Beasley JW, Watkinson MD, Temte JL, Tuan W-J, Sinsky CA, Gilchrist VJ..Ann Fam Med. 2017 September/October;15(5)5:419-26.
Dr. Skolnik is a professor of family and community medicine at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and an associate director of the family medicine residency program at Abington (Pa.) Jefferson Health. Dr. Notte is a family physician and Associate Chief Medical Information Officer for Jefferson Health. Follow him on twitter (@doctornotte).