Will Giving Doctors More Money to Coordinate Care Pay Off?

I think , the pay boost rewards doctors who reshape their practices to recreate an era when a trusted family physician helped patients through hospitalizations, coordinated specialist care and provided routine screenings. Such efforts may save money by reducing hospitalizations, ER visits and disease.

In my opinion, the concept aims to change rushed doctor’s appointments and fragmented specialist care by creating patient care “teams,” which could include nurse practitioners, nutritionists or other medical staff. Medical homes also offer longer office hours, electronic medical records and same-day appointments.

I think , while this seems to be a great idea, we need to look at how feasible this is. While health maintenance organizations and managed care companies aimed for such coordination, many didn’t pay doctors adequately for it, instead rewarding them financially for restricting care. Under medical homes, he says, doctors won’t prevent patients from seeing specialists or ordering tests.