Patient Centered Medical Home: An Anchor in the Ocean of Health Care?

The health care system is a ruthless and turbulent ocean. For many patients, even a regular visit to the doctor can be quite unforgiving. With patient safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, efficiency, timeliness, and equity concerns, health care visits can feel like navigating the ocean on a flimsy fishing boat. Now that we are transitioning into the phase of implementing and executing health reform, we must push patient-centeredness to the forefront of all our efforts to inform us on how to improve the quality of our health care system.

For example, the concept of the medical home that many say will transform health care into a more coordinated and comprehensive system isn’t just implementing electronic medical records, restructuring care teams that group physicians, nurses, physician assistants and other allied health workers together, redefining scheduling, or figuring out how to pay for these new services. The medical home needs to be a patient-centered medical home—one that actively engages the patient’s needs and concerns. Our system’s struggles with achieving patient-centered care is most evident in how health care providers deliver bad news to patients...

Read the full post at the IHI Open School Blog

Lunch with Dr. Dean Gruner

The IHI Open School is a great resource for learning from the leaders in the health care field. As the first educational event of the year, five IHI members had a causal lunch with Dr. Dean Gruner, the president and CEO of ThedaCare. He described the lean processes his Wisconsin-based health system put in place to dramatically improve patient care. We learned about the beginnings of the program, his leadership style, and his thoughts on quality improvement. It was a wonderful opportunity to get a personal look at how the initiatives IHI promotes work on the ground. At the end of the hour, we joined him in a larger lecture where he talked in more detail about the cultural changes associated with quality improvement.

Dr. Jack Billi, the Associate Vice President of Medical Affairs at UMHS, joined us for lunch to add his perspective on lean process. Dr. Billi will come to the Open School in October to lead a lean training session. Watch this space for more information about these sessions and more opportunities to meet leaders in our field!

Steve Brown
Ross School of Business