Integrated service delivery is a system for providing care across health system levels. It includes person-centredness, comprehensiveness, and continuity of care. A Primary Care Physician (PCP) leads the care team, which consists of other clinicians. They work collaboratively with patients, each other, and with administrative staff to ensure high quality, personalized care. The PCP can also be a family medicine physician, an internal medicine physician, or a pediatrician. These providers diagnose and treat most illnesses and perform physical exams. The care team may include a nurse or nurse practitioner who administers certain treatments. A registered nurse has a four-year bachelor's degree and has passed a national licensing exam.
A growing body of research has characterized the organization and use of primary care services. These include standardized geographical units called Primary Care Service Areas (PCSAs) to measure primary care resources and outcomes. The primary outcome measure is the rate of service utilisation, which is the total number of primary care contacts per quarter. The secondary outcome measure is the association between service utilisation and all-cause mortality. These results are generally inconclusive. However, these data are important to inform decisions about benefits programs. In many countries, healthcare reforms focused on improving access to and quality of primary care have been implemented. In the United States, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) focused on primary care.
In addition to the ACA, other changes have occurred to the US healthcare system that have focused on improving access to and quality of primary health care. A variety of federal programs have increased the availability of generalist clinicians and funded health professions training and community health centers. Despite these improvements, the United States still faces a shortage of primary care practitioners. Some of these initiatives directly support primary care residency training programs and increase the number of generalist clinicians. Others have encouraged medical students to pursue subspecialties. While these policies have had an overall positive effect on the health care system, there have been unintended consequences.
Another approach to evaluating the supply and use of Primary Care Doctor has been to create Primary Care Service Areas (PCSAs). A PCSA is a geographically defined area that combines high and low users. The area is defined by a zip code and tested using commercial claims. These models can provide accurate individual level estimates of geographic access. Several countries have created PCSAs to facilitate primary care policymaking. While these maps have been used extensively in the study of the supply and use of primary care practitioners, the usefulness of these maps has not been fully assessed.
Other research has suggested that racial concordance among physicians and patients has a positive influence on the quality of care. This is an interesting concept, but further study is needed to understand how these relationships affect clinical care.
The reorganization of primary care services has resulted in a considerable change in how patients are treated. In addition, this reorganization has improved the continuity of care. It is expected that the primary care service areas will be a useful tool to evaluate the effectiveness of these reforms. If you want to know more about this topic, then click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_health_care.
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