MVP Healthcare/Preferred Care and Excellus BlueCross BlueShield will work with primary care physicians in the Rochester, N.Y. area to improve the way patients receive care.
Up to 20 internal medicine and family physicians who already use electronic medical records will be invited to participate in a three-year medical home initiative, organized by the two health insurers. The goal of the initiative is to enhance patient care, help maintain or reduce healthcare costs and improve physicians' job satisfaction.
The initiative will cover start-up costs and the cost of hiring a care manager to work with the physician to make sure patients are properly managing their chronic conditions and don't have gaps in care. The goal of the program is to allow physicians fewer patient visits per day, so they can spend more time with each patient they see.
"Primary care physicians have told us that they don't have enough time and resources to adequately coordinate care for all their patients," said Robert J. Holzhauer, MD, vice president and chief medical officer at Excellus BCBS. "Our investment in primary care in Rochester should help physicians spend more time coordinating the right care for their patients, benefiting both patients and physicians."
As a group, Rochester's primary care physicians who treat adults are aging, and fewer medical residents are entering the field. The six-county region around Rochester faces a potential shortage of primary care physicians if action is not taken.
The initiative hopes to increase the job satisfaction of primary care physicians and make their incomes more competitive with other physician specialists. The goal is to encourage more medical residents to go into primary care, better serving the needs of Rochester-area patients.
"Improvements in the quality of care and patient and physician satisfaction will lead to better outcomes and help lower the spiraling costs of healthcare," said Stephen H. Cohen, MD, vice president of medical affairs for MVP Preferred Care, a non-profit health insurer and part of Schenectady, N.Y.-based MVP Health Care.
Though medical homes have been growing in popularity nationally, this is the first medical home initiative to be started in Rochester.
"What excites me the most about the medical home initiative is the promise of physicians returning to the joy of practicing medicine," said Joseph DiPoala Jr., MD, of Ridgeview Internal Medicine in Irondequoit, N.Y., who serves on the initiative's advisory board. "Physicians will be able to focus more on the cognitive aspects of patient care, delegating some of the nonclinical work to their staff. There is good evidence that patients' quality of life will be significantly improved as a result."