Provider incentives are a commonly used policy tool to mold provider behaviors.1 However, while we frequently measure the change in patient outcomes, failure to consistently produce changes in outcomes does not mean that providers are not changing their behavior. This paper focuses on two programs with null or inconsistent quality outcomes to try to identify why such inconsistency occurs. The two programs, both ratified in the Affordable Care Act, are 1) patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), and 2) the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program. Chapter 1: Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel survey (MEPS), I match provider characteristic surveys to member experience with care in order to evaluate characteristics key to patient-centered medical homes. I find that patient-perceived patient-centeredness of a practice is not related to the number of PCMH attributes a practice reports. However, some characteristics do play specific and significant roles in patient perception and outcomes. For instance, case management is not only associated with increased patient perception of after-hours access to care, but overall costs were reduced. Interestingly, having after hours clinic hours was more common with practices highly consistent with PCMH criteria, but these hours did not result in decreased emergency department use or cost of care. Chapter 2: The second provider incentive studied is the Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program (HVBP). This program assigns payment adjustments based on performance on a series of rotating quality metrics. To date, changes in patient outcomes cannot be attributed to the program; however, it should not be concluded that hospitals are not responding at all. I identify changes in staffing by provider type as an early indicator of hospital response to payment incentives. Data come from the Virginia Health Information (VHI) Hospital Cost Report, 2010-2017. Using a generalized linear model, I find that when receiving a penalty, hospitals reduce staffing among the most and least expensive personnel (physicians and nursing aides). Hospitals increase nursing and administrative staff following a bonus. These findings are consistent with hospitals responding to incentives both by aiming to improve efficient use of resources and maintain or improve quality of care. Chapter 3: Finally, I assess potential unintended consequences of the HVBP program, specifically the provision of charity care. Using the VHI cost reports for year 2013 to 2017 with a regression discontinuity model, I find that hospitals receiving a bonus decrease their charity care among the lowest income patients (under 100% federal poverty level (FPL)). Hospitals receiving a penalty tend to reduce charity care among higher income patients (100%-200% FPL). These findings are consistent with two separate responses to the incentives. Hospitals receiving bonuses appear to be cream-skimming healthier, wealthier individuals while hospitals receiving penalties appear to be shifting the focus of their charity care to the most needy, likely in an effort to reduce cost of care levels overall while maintaining their community benefit programs, potentially as a result of goal gradient cognitive bias.

Ineffectively managed chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus (DM) increase overall health care expenditures and negatively affects health outcomes such as exacerbations, functional decline, disability, and death. The purpose of this systematic review (SR) was to review the DM outcomes reported by patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs). The goal was to determine how care coordination and evidence-based clinical management impacted financial and health outcomes. The SR followed the Cochrane protocol and complied with the PRISMA evidence-based minimum set for reporting. Overall, DM management in the PCMH demonstrated statistically significant completion rates for essential screenings and preventive care, including HgA1c (p = 0.0013), lipid management (p

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) represents one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the history of United States healthcare. The PPACA has two main goals: to increase the insured patient population in the US and to reduce the overall cost while improving the quality of healthcare in the US. To accomplish the latter goal, healthcare providers are experiencing a movement toward integrated, team-oriented models that place increasing accountability on the providers and institutions. At the same time, these integrative models emphasize effective preventive care, which is critical in reducing the country’s overall healthcare costs. As more health care institutions and providers across the country adopt the healthcare reform models of the Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMH) and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) directly under the PPACA, the demand for pharmacists is increasing. In addition, the role of the pharmacist through Medication Therapy Management (MTM) is growing as more public and private sectors adopt MTM and its standards are being used as the medication-related cornerstone for the ACOs. There is a call for lower costs and higher quality outcomes in healthcare, and the pharmacists are increasingly integrated into direct patient care and medication management. The newly integrated responsibilities of the pharmacist are numerous and almost limitless. The roleof pharmacists is expanding, and as many studies suggest, their contributions produce auspicious results.

Objective: Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), a telementoring program, utilizes lectures, case-based learning, and an “all teach–all learn” approach to increase primary care provider (PCP) knowledge/confidence in managing chronic health conditions. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Epilepsy and Comorbidities ECHO incorporated quality improvement (QI) methodology to create meaningful practice change, while increasing PCP knowledge/self-efficacy in epilepsy management using the ECHO model. Methods: Monthly ECHO sessions (May 2018 to December 2018) included lectures, case presentations/discussion, and QI review. Pediatric practices were recruited through the AAP. Practices engaged in ECHO sessions and improvement activities including monthly Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, team huddles, chart reviews, and QI coaching calls to facilitate practice change. They were provided resource toolkits with documentation templates, safety handouts, and medication side effects sheets. QI measures were selected from the American Academy of Neurology Measurement Set for Epilepsy. The AAP Quality Improvement Data Aggregator was used for data entry, run chart development, and tracking outcomes. Participants completed retrospective surveys to assess changes in knowledge and self-efficacy. Results: Seven practices participated across five states. Average session attendance was 14 health professionals (range = 13-17). A total of 479 chart reviews demonstrated improvement in six of seven measures: health care transition (45.3%, P =.005), safety education (41.6%, P =.036), mental/behavioral health screening (32.2% P =.027), tertiary center referral (26.7%, not significant [n.s.]), antiseizure therapy side effects (23%, n.s.), and documenting seizure frequency (7.1%, n.s.); counseling for women of childbearing age decreased by 7.8%. Significance: This project demonstrated that integrating QI into an ECHO model results in practice change and increases PCP knowledge/confidence/self-efficacy in managing epilepsy.

Large portions of the US population live in poor inner-city communities. Health needs assessment data have shown that these communities have disproportionately high rates of chronic illnesses. The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model was developed to address the gaps that exist in the primary care system, and emphasizes a redesign of primary care that is patient centered, utilizes multiple levels of healthcare professionals, information technology, and care coordination. However, little evidence exists on the value of this model which may explain why it has not gained wide acceptance by primary care providers. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the efficacy of the PCMH model through emergency department and inpatient utilization reductions, and with a specific focus on the role of social connectedness. This research used existing data on 706 participants from Columbia University and a local New York inner-city hospital. An in-depth analysis of hospital utilization data, using an unpaired two-sample t-test and linear regression, found that the PCMH framework strengthens continuity of care and care coordination, and helps reduce avoidable hospitalization utilization. Additionally, these reductions were greater for study participants with strong social support networks. This research highlights the relationships between primary care, social support networks, and good health outcomes. Over time, further enhancement of the PCMH and systemic changes to the delivery of care may contribute to the development of a stronger primary care system that place patients at the center of care, focuses on the importance of social connectedness, and contributes to a lasting impact on society through the development of overall healthier communities.

No description available.

The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is an innovative, team-based health care model that was applied during the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, the competencies for PCMH health care social worker team members are not identified within this model. Thus, the purpose of this phenomenological study focused on identifying the core competencies that will enable social workers to perform competently in PCMHs. This study also explored the roles and training needs as related to improving the competence of social workers. Sandberg’s and Parry’s conceptualization of the competency model was used as the theoretical framework. Data were acquired through interviews with 10 PCMH social workers. These data were then inductively coded and analyzed using a modified Moustakas method. Key findings indicated that these social workers believed that improvements in competencies may include training and knowledge with mental health and physical health knowledge which consist of diagnoses, interventions, medications, symptoms, and terminology. It was also noted that knowledge of evidence-based practices for mental health interventions and patient-centered, team-based principles were essential to ACA policy implementation. The positive social change implications of this study include recommendations to health care leadership, educational institutions, and other PCMH providers to develop competency-based training for social workers. Recommendations are also put forth to adapt social work curriculum to ensure the effective implementation of the principles of the ACA policy and to improve social work practice in PCMH health care settings.

L’exercice des soins de premier recours en maisons et pôles de santé pluriprofessionnels (MSP) connaît depuis quelques années un développement croissant. Ces modalités d’exercice sont présentées comme une solution aux défis que représentent le vieillissement de la population, l’augmentation de la prévalence des maladies chroniques, l’accentuation des inégalités sociales de santé et l’irrésistible croissance des dépenses de santé. Elles s’inscrivent dans une remise en cause du système de santé français, construit historiquement sur un modèle curatif hospitalo-centré et sur une médecine de ville d’exercice libéral et isolé. L’impératif d’un recentrage du système sur les soins de premier recours devient un objectif partagé par l’Etat et certains professionnels libéraux, associé à celui de leur réorganisation pour en accroître la dimension préventive et éducative, dans une approche de santé publique collective, populationnelle et mieux coordonnée au niveau d’un territoire. Comment les soins primaires se transforment-ils dans les MSP ? Dans les dynamiques observées, quels places et rôles jouent les pratiques préventives et éducatives ? Ces questions sont abordées avec une posture de recherche « engagée », inscrite dans une réflexion méthodologique et politique, articulant des approches médicale, de santé publique et sociologique. L’analyse de la littérature permet de resituer les MSP dans un continuum d’innovations organisationnelles, favorisées par la baisse de la démographie médicale, l’inégale répartition des professionnels et la territorialisation de l’offre de soins. Pour saisir de manière simultanée et dynamique les mutations en cours dans ce type de structure, leurs modalités et le sens que leur donnent les acteurs qui s’y engagent, la recherche s’appuie sur la monographie ethnographique d’un projet de MSP suivi dans la longue durée et sur des entretiens menés auprès de professionnels exerçant dans quatre MSP contrastées. La sociologie de l’innovation permet d’éclairer les « manières de faire » et les opérations de traduction qui tissent le développement d’un exercice coordonné en MSP et la mise en œuvre de pratiques préventives et éducatives entre des acteurs travaillant généralement peu ensemble. La sociologie interactionniste permet en outre d’appréhender les difficultés ressenties par les acteurs dans leur pratique, leurs objectifs et arguments en faveur de ce nouveau cadre organisationnel, ainsi que la diversité des formes de leur engagement et des logiques sociales qui les sous-tendent. Les MSP et les démarches de prévention et d’« éducation thérapeutique » qui y sont développées apparaissent comme des instruments politiques efficaces de « mise en mouvement » des professionnels autour d’objectifs et d’organisations à co-construire, pouvant emprunter plusieurs voies. Dans ces dispositifs locaux d’innovation souple, pluriprofessionnalité et pratiques préventives se nourrissent mutuellement, contribuant à une structuration territoriale des soins primaires et à l’émergence d’une définition étendue de la prévention. Cependant, ces transformations rencontrent des freins importants. D’une part, la réinvention d’une médecine collective de ville, contre laquelle s’était construite la médecine libérale, se heurte au poids des logiques professionnelles, questionnant la possibilité d’une diffusion de ces nouvelles organisations. D’autre part, l’ampleur de l’offre préventive et éducative est limitée par les ressources disponibles, par les choix des professionnels et par la faible place donnée aux patients et aux usagers. Ces résultats interrogent la capacité des acteurs à dépasser des logiques professionnelles pour intégrer dorénavant des logiques de santé publique à visée préventive et éducative. Ils questionnent également leur volonté de s’inscrire dans une démarche de promotion de la santé, permettant d’interpeller les politiques sur les actions intersectorielles à mener contre les déterminants des inégalités sociales de santé. / The delivery of primary care in multi-professional health care centres (MSPs) has met with growing interest over the past few years. These types of care organisations have been presented as a solution to the challenges associated with population ageing, the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, the rise of inequalities in healthcare and of healthcare expenditures. MSPs contribute to the questioning of the French health care system, based historically on a curative and hospital-centred model complemented by a self-employed, isolated and city-concentrated system of medical practice. The need to give primary care a central place in the system has become an objective shared by public institutions and by some self-employed healthcare professionals (HCPs). It is associated with the aim of restructuring primary care in order to emphasize a prevention-based approach, in a more collective, coordinated, population-based and territory-based approach of public health. How are primary care practices being transformed within these MSPs? In the dynamics observed, what are the place and role played by preventive and educational practices? These questions are explored with a posture of “committed” research, based on a methodological and political reflection, involving medical, public health and sociological approaches. An analysis of the literature enables this research to place the development of MSPs in a continuum of organisational innovations, favoured by the decreasing number of doctors, the uneven distribution of HCPs and the territorialisation of healthcare provision. In order to seize - in a simultaneous and dynamic way - the current transformations and arrangements observed in MSPs and the meaning they have for the actors involved, the research is based on an ethnographical monograph of a project of MSP followed over a long period, and on interviews held with actors practicing in four different MSPs. The sociology of innovation enables us to highlight the “ways of doing things” and the translation operations that help to weave together the development of coordinated practice in MSPs and the implementation of prevention and educational measures involving actors not accustomed to working together. Moreover, the interactionist perspective in sociology allows us to apprehend the difficulties met by the actors in their daily practice, their aims and their arguments in favour of a new organisational framework, as well as the diversity of the different forms of their engagement and the underlying social dynamics. MSPs and initiatives of prevention and patient education implemented in these institutions appear as effective political instruments to “put professionals in movement” around objectives and organisations that have to be built up together, following several paths. With these flexible innovative devices, multi-professionality and preventive practices feed mutually on each other, contributing to the structuring of a primary care system on a territorial basis, and to the emergence of a wider definition of prevention. However, these transformations meet important constraints. On one hand, the reinvention of a collective medicine, against which the self-employed medicine has been opposed for over a century, collides with the weight of a heavy professional logical system, questioning the possibility of an extension of these new organisations. On the other hand, the scale of the preventive and educational supply of care is limited by the available resources as well as the choices made by the actors- and by the low rank given to patients. These results question the capacity of the actors to overtake the logical professional approach in order that they integrate from now on a public health logical approach with a preventive and educational aim. They also question the will of the actors to integrate a health-promoting approach, than could tackle the politics of intersectoral actions to affront the determinants of health inequalities.

Human Systems Integration Capstone / Approved for public release;distribution is unlimited. / In the United States Air Force (USAF), a system is generally thought of in terms of technology; but there are other types of systems supporting our warfighters. A system is “a group of related parts that move or work together” (Merriam-Webster, 2014), suggesting that systems can also be a compilation of human activities and interactions. One such system is the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS). The AFMS has been charged with the delivery of healthcare for the USAF. It is an organization within which there are many workplaces, and these are prototypical of workplaces in the USAF. The USAF currently has no framework for developing organizations. This capstone project took an inside look into the organizational structure of the Keesler Air Force Base’s Base Operational Medicine Cell (BOMC). By conducting a macroergonomic analysis, I was able to make recommendations for an effective and fully harmonized organizational design. Human systems integration (HSI) played a pivotal role in the evaluation of the Keesler BOMC, as Manpower, Personnel, and Training (MPT) are key drivers in the development of organizations. The results of this analysis lead to the development of BOMC requirements and subsequently HSI requirements for organizations, or an HSI Framework for Organizations.

Background: In Sweden, health outcomes for children placed in care have been disappointing. ‘Placed in care’ refers to social out of home care (OHC). Hälsofam is a medical home model for healthcare of children in OHC currently delivered in Uppsala. Aim: To explore how social workers perceive and experience the Hälsofam model. Methodology: A qualitative explorative study with ten semi-structured individual telephone interviews. The criteria for inclusion in the study sample were employees within the social service, working in a specialised case unit and having experience of referring children and/or adolescents to Hälsofam. Results: Working with Hälsofam has offered social workers a way into the health care sector, which is something that previously has been limited. The Hälsofam model has offered the social workers an active collaborative working situation, where focus has been given to organised work across the ‘silos’ of care services for these children. However, the findings raised the question of whether or not all children and adolescents have the same possibility to receive care from Hälsofam. Conclusion: The Hälsofam model appears to have had a positive impact on the interrelations between the social service and the health care sector. Social workers perceive it to facilitate necessary support for children and adolescents in OHC. Yet, findings show that personal views of the social worker and the societal situation in which they operate create limitations for providing care for every child and adolescent. / Bakgrund: I Sverige har hälsoutfallen för barn och ungdomar inom socialtjänstens placeringar utanför det egna hemmet varit bristande. Hälsofam är en organisatorisk modell inom hälso- och sjukvård för barn i placeringar utanför det egna hemmet i Uppsala. Syfte: Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie är att undersöka hur anställda inom Socialtjänsten har upplevt och erfarit Hälsofam-modellen. Metod: En kvalitativ explorativ studie med tio semi-strukturerade individuella telefonintervjuer användes. Kriterier för inkludering i studieurvalet var att personen skulle vara anställd inom Socialtjänsten, arbeta med denna typ av fall samt ha erfarenhet av att remittera barn och unga till Hälsofam. Resultat: Arbetet med Hälsofam har erbjudit anställa inom socialtjänsten en väg in till hälso- och sjukvården, vilket tidigare upplevts begränsat. Hälsofam har erbjudit anställda inom socialtjänsten ett aktivt samarbete, där fokus har lagts på organiserat interprofessionellt arbete. Frågan har också rests, huruvida alla barn och ungdomar har samma möjlighet till vård inom Hälsofam. Slutsats: Hälsofam-modellen har haft en positiv inverkan på det inbördes förhållandet mellan Socialtjänst och hälso- och sjukvårdssektorn. Anställda inom socialtjänsten upplever även att arbetet med att stödja de barn och unga som får vård utanför hemmet, har blivit lättare i och med Hälsofam. Resultatet visar dock att det personliga perspektivet hos den anställda samt den samhälleliga situationen där de arbetar, skapar begräsningar för att erbjuda vård till alla barn och unga.