Dataset Information

Open access in the patient-centered medical home: lessons from the Veterans Health Administration.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has undertaken a 5-year initiative to transform to a patient-centered medical home model. An early focus of implementation was on creating open access, defined as continuity and capacity in primary care.

Objective

We describe the impact of readiness for implementation on efforts of pilot teams to make changes to improve access and identify successful strategies used by early adopters to overcome barriers to change.

Design

A qualitative, formative evaluation of the first 18 months of implementation in one Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) spread across six states.

Participants

Members of local implementation teams including administrators, primary care providers, and staff from primary care clinics located at 10 medical centers and 45 outpatient clinics.

Approach

We conducted site visits during the first 6 months of implementation, observations at Learning Collaboratives, semi-structured interviews, and review of internal organizational documents. All data collection took place between April 2010 and December 2011.

Key results

Early adopters employed various strategies to enhance access, with a focus on decreasing demand for face-to-face care, increasing supply of different types of primary care encounters, and improving clinic efficiencies. Our interviews with key contacts revealed three important areas where readiness for implementation (or lack thereof) had an impact on interventions to improve access: leadership engagement, staffing resources, and access to information and knowledge.

Conclusions

Key factors related to readiness for implementation had an impact on which interventions pilot teams could put into place, as well as the viability and sustainability of access gains. Wide variations in interventions to improve access occurring across sites situated within one organization have important implications for efforts to measure the impact of enhanced access on patient outcomes, costs, and other systems-level indicators of the Medical Home.

SUBMITTER: True G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3599018 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Open access in the patient-centered medical home: lessons from the Veterans Health Administration.

True Gala G Butler Anneliese E AE Lamparska Bozena G BG Lempa Michele L ML Shea Judy A JA Asch David A DA Werner Rachel M RM

Journal of general internal medicine 20121129 4

<h4>Background</h4>The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has undertaken a 5-year initiative to transform to a patient-centered medical home model. An early focus of implementation was on creating open access, defined as continuity and capacity in primary care.<h4>Objective</h4>We describe the impact of readiness for implementation on efforts of pilot teams to make changes to improve access and identify successful strategies used by early adopters to overcome barriers to change.<h4>Design</h4> ...[more]

PMID: 23192447

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Project description:BackgroundThe Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) has emphasized timely access to primary care, often by using non-traditional modes of delivery, such as care in person after-hours or by phone during or after normal hours. Limited data exists on whether improving patient-reported access with these service types reduces hospitalization.ObjectiveTo examine the association of patient-reported access to primary care within the Veteran Health Administration (VHA) via five service types and hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs).DesignRetrospective cohort study, using multivariable logistic regression adjusting for patient demographics, comorbidity, characteristics of patients' area of residence, and clinic-level random effects.ParticipantsA total of 69,710 VHA primary care patients who responded to the 2012 Survey of Healthcare Experiences of Patients (SHEP), PCMH module.Main measuresSurvey questions captured patients' ability to obtain care from VHA for five service types: routine care, immediate care, after-hours care, care by phone during regular office hours, and care by phone after normal hours. Outcomes included binary measures of hospitalization for overall, acute, and chronic ACSCs in 2013, identified in VHA administrative data and Medicare fee-for-service claims.Key resultsPatients who reported "always" able to obtain after-hours care compared to "never" were less likely to be hospitalized for chronic ACSCs (OR 0.62, 95% CI 0.44-0.89, p = 0.009). Patients reporting "usually" getting care by phone during regular hours were more likely have a hospitalization for chronic ACSC (OR 1.49, 95% CI 1.03-2.17, p = 0.034). Experiences with routine care, immediate care, and care by phone after-hours demonstrated no significant association with hospitalization for ACSCs.ConclusionsImproving patients' ability to obtain after-hours care was associated with fewer hospitalizations for chronic ACSCs, while access to care by phone during regular hours was associated with more hospitalizations. Health systems should consider the benefits, including reduced hospitalizations for chronic ACSCs, against the costs of implementing each of these PCMH services.

Project description:BackgroundThe patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model has several components to improve care for patients with high comorbidity, including greater access to face-to-face primary care.ObjectiveWe examined whether high-comorbidity patients had larger increases in primary care provider (PCP) visits attributable to PCMH implementation in a large integrated health system relative to other patients enrolled in primary care.Design, subjects and main measuresThis longitudinal study examined a 1 % random sample of 9.3 million patients enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) at any time between 2003 and 2013. Face-to-face visits with PCPs per quarter were identified through VHA administrative data. Comorbidity was measured using the Gagne index and patients with a weighted score of ≥ 2 were defined as high comorbidity. We applied interrupted time-series models to estimate marginal changes in PCP visits attributable to PCMH implementation. Differences in marginal changes were calculated across comorbidity groups (high vs. low). Analyses were stratified by age group to account for Medicare eligibility.Key resultsAmong age 65+ patients, PCMH was associated with greater PCP visits starting four and ten quarters following implementation for high- and low-comorbidity patients, respectively. Changes were larger for high-comorbidity patients (eight to 11 greater visits per 1000 patients per quarter). Among patients age < 65, PCMH was associated with greater visits for high-comorbidity patients starting eight quarters following implementation, but fewer visits for low-comorbidity patients in all quarters. The difference in visit changes across groups ranged from 18 to 67 visits per 1000 patients per quarter.ConclusionsIncreases in PCP visits attributable to PCMH were greater among patients with higher comorbidity. Health systems implementing PCMH should account for population-level comorbidity burden when planning for PCMH-related changes in PCP utilization.

Project description:BackgroundEffective implementation strategies might facilitate patient-centered medical home (PCMH) uptake and spread by targeting barriers to change. Evidence-based quality improvement (EBQI) is a multi-faceted implementation strategy that is based on a clinical-researcher partnership. It promotes organizational change by fostering innovation and the spread of those innovations that are successful. Previous studies demonstrated that EBQI accelerated PCMH adoption within Veterans Health Administration primary care practices, compared with standard PCMH implementation. Research to date has not documented fidelity to the EBQI implementation strategy, limiting usefulness of prior research findings. This paper develops and assesses clinical participants' fidelity to three core EBQI elements for PCMH (EBQI-PCMH), explores the relationship between fidelity and successful QI project completion and spread (the outcome of EBQI-PCMH), and assesses the role of the clinical-researcher partnership in achieving EBQI-PCMH fidelity.MethodsNine primary care practice sites and seven across-sites, topic-focused workgroups participated (2010-2014). Core EBQI elements included leadership-frontlines priority-setting for QI, ongoing access to technical expertise, coaching, and mentoring in QI methods (through a QI collaborative), and data/evidence use to inform QI. We used explicit criteria to measure and assess EBQI-PCMH fidelity across clinical participants. We mapped fidelity to evaluation data on implementation and spread of successful QI projects/products. To assess the clinical-researcher partnership role in EBQI-PCMH, we analyzed 73 key stakeholder interviews using thematic analysis.ResultsSeven of 9 sites and 3 of 7 workgroups achieved high or medium fidelity to leadership-frontlines priority-setting. Fidelity was mixed for ongoing technical expertise and data/evidence use. Longer duration in EBQI-PCMH and higher fidelity to priority-setting and ongoing technical expertise appear correlated with successful QI project completion and spread. According to key stakeholders, partnership with researchers, as well as bi-directional communication between leaders and QI teams and project management/data support were critical to achieving EBQI-PCMH fidelity.ConclusionsThis study advances implementation theory and research by developing measures for and assessing fidelity to core EBQI elements in relationship to completion and spread of QI innovation projects or tools for addressing PCMH challenges. These results help close the gap between EBQI elements, their intended outcome, and the finding that EBQI-PCMH resulted in accelerated adoption of PCMH.

Project description:BackgroundFollowing implementation of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), access to primary care improved. However, understanding of how this occurred is lacking.ObjectiveTo examine the association between organizational aspects of the PCMH model and access-related initiatives with patient perception of access to urgent, same-day, and routine care within the VA.DesignCross-sectional PARTICIPANTS: Veterans who responded to the annual Survey of Healthcare Experiences of Patients in 2016 (N = 241,122 patients) and primary staff who responded to VA National Primary Care Provider and Staff Survey (N = 4815 staff).Main measuresThree outcomes of perception of access: percentage of patients responding in the highest category for same-day care (waiting ≤ 1 day), urgent care (always receiving care when needed), and routine care (always receiving checkups when desired). Predictors were staff-level report of access-related initiatives and organizational factors in the clinic. We used generalized estimating equations to model associations, adjusting for characteristics of patients and their respective clinics.Key resultsAccess was significantly better in clinics where staff reviewed performance reports (+ 0.9% in the highest perception of access for urgent care, P < 0.01; + 1.2% for routine care, P < 0.001), leadership was supportive of the PCMH (+ 1.6% for urgent care, P < 0.01), and initiatives to improve access included open access (+ 0.8% to + 1.7% across all outcomes, P < 0.01) and telehealth visits (+ 1.2% to + 1.4%, P < 0.001). Perceived access was worse in clinics with moderate staff burnout (- 1.1% to - 1.4%, P < 0.001), primary care provider turnover during the past year (- 1.0% to - 1.6%, P < 0.001), or medical support assistant turnover in the past year (- 0.9% to - 1.4%, P < 0.001).ConclusionsPerception of access was strongly associated with identifiable organizational factors and access-related initiatives within VA primary care clinics that could be adopted by other health systems.

Project description:The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is four things: 1) the fundamental tenets of primary care: first contact access, comprehensiveness, integration/coordination, and relationships involving sustained partnership; 2) new ways of organizing practice; 3) development of practices' internal capabilities, and 4) related health care system and reimbursement changes. All of these are focused on improving the health of whole people, families, communities and populations, and on increasing the value of healthcare. The value of the fundamental tenets of primary care is well established. This value includes higher health care quality, better whole-person and population health, lower cost and reduced inequalities compared to healthcare systems not based on primary care. The needed practice organizational and health care system change aspects of the PCMH are still evolving in highly related ways. The PCMH will continue to evolve as evidence comes in from hundreds of demonstrations and experiments ongoing around the country, and as the local and larger healthcare systems change. Measuring the PCMH involves the following: Giving primacy to the core tenets of primary care. Assessing practice and system changes that are hypothesized to provide added value Assessing development of practices' core processes and adaptive reserve. Assessing integration with more functional healthcare system and community resources. Evaluating the potential for unintended negative consequences from valuing the more easily measured instrumental features of the PCMH over the fundamental relationship and whole system aspects. Recognizing that since a fundamental benefit of primary care is its adaptability to diverse people, populations and systems, functional PCMHs will look different in different settings. Efforts to transform practice to patient-centered medical homes must recognize, assess and value the fundamental features of primary care that provide personalized, equitable health care and foster individual and population health.

Dataset Information

Open access in the patient-centered medical home: lessons from the Veterans Health Administration.

Background

Objective

Design

Participants

Approach

Key results

Conclusions

Publications

Open access in the patient-centered medical home: lessons from the Veterans Health Administration.

Similar Datasets

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