Medical home care approach improves efficiency and care at clinic for low-income families
2010-10-05
(Press-News.org) SAN FRANCISCO – Implementing a Medical Home practice model in a health clinic allows physicians and staff to provide comprehensive care to more patients, and to offer preventive programs and services. This can improve patients' compliance with their doctors' recommendations and reduce emergency room visits and hospital admissions, according to research presented Monday, Oct. 4, 2010, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco.
The study, "Doing Well by Doing Good," outlines the evolution of a federally qualified health center (FQHC) at Stamford Hospital in Stamford Conn. The clinic was struggling to optimally treat a high-volume of patients, many with complicated health issues requiring more time than the scheduled 20-minute pediatric visit. With so many appointments lasting up to an hour, the clinic was unable to serve all of the children who needed care and did not receive enough in reimbursements to cover expenses.
The clinic received a grant to provide staff support to implement a Medical Home model of care for children with special health care needs. Medical Home is an AAP-recommended approach to providing accessible, continuous, comprehensive, coordinated, compassionate, patient- and family-centered and culturally effective care.
After Medical Home implementation, the clinic was serving more patients, as pediatricians focused exclusively on health care, while a care coordinator secured appointments with specialists, handled school issues, and performed other administrative functions. The clinic established processes that improved efficiency and achieved a 95 percent immunization rate, had fewer emergency room visits and reduced hospital admissions.
The clinic also created an enhanced care clinic for mental health services and an Easy Breathing asthma education program. The hospital foundation supported an obesity effort by providing a nutritionist and funding a 12-week, award-winning exercise program called KIDS FANS (Kids' Fitness and Nutrition Services). This obesity prevention program received the 2010 Connecticut Hospital Association Community Service Award presented by the Connecticut Hospital Association and the Connecticut State Department of Public Health.
"Physicians can use the Medical Home model to link preventive services, and to build programs to efficiently serve high volumes of patients, even in a federally qualified health center," said lead study author Madhu Mathur, MD, MPH, FAAP. "This model can result in outstanding immunization rates and collaborative efforts for problems like obesity."
###
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit www.aap.org.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-10-05
SAN FRANCISCO – New mothers who smoke are less likely to breastfeed. But those who quit smoking during or just prior to becoming pregnant were significantly more likely to remain smoke free and continue breastfeeding if they received support and encouragement during the first eight weeks following child birth, according to a study presented Monday, Oct. 4, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco.
Mothers who smoke are more than twice as likely to quit breastfeeding before their child is 10 weeks old, and more than ...
2010-10-05
SAN FRANCISCO – While more American mothers are breastfeeding today, non-Hispanic Black/African American women are less likely to initiate and continue breastfeeding, primarily due to a lack of desire and lack of self-efficacy, according to research presented Monday, Oct. 4, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco.
Fifty-four percent of black women initiate breastfeeding, compared to the 73 percent national average. In the study, "Barriers to Breastfeeding Reported by Exclusively Formula Feeding Mothers," urban ...
2010-10-05
ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research shows how old people are when they first develop Parkinson's disease is one of many clues in how long they'll survive with the disease. The research is published in the October 5, 2010, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The 12-year study included 230 people with Parkinson's disease, of whom 211 died by the end of the research. "Remarkably, time to death for these people took anywhere from two to 37 years from diagnosis so it's important we try to identify those risk factors that lead to ...
2010-10-05
Cutting back on sleep reduces the benefits of dieting, according to a study published October 5, 2010, in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
When dieters in the study got a full night's sleep, they lost the same amount of weight as when they slept less. When dieters got adequate sleep, however, more than half of the weight they lost was fat. When they cut back on their sleep, only one-fourth of their weight loss came from fat.
They also felt hungrier. When sleep was restricted, dieters produced higher levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger and reduces energy ...
2010-10-05
Acute herpes zoster, or shingles, interferes with all health areas for people with the condition, including sleep, enjoyment of life and general activities, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj091711.pdf.
Herpes zoster is a reactivation of the chicken pox (varicella-zoster) virus which results in pain and a rash with small blisters. It occurs in people who have had chicken pox and is most common in people over the age of 50, although younger people can have the condition. ...
2010-10-05
Better psychological and spiritual support, better planning of care and stronger relationships with physicians are necessary to improve end-of-life care in Canada, states a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100131.pdf.
The study, a questionnaire that aimed to measure satisfaction with end-of-life care for patients with advanced diseases and their families, involved 363 patients over 55 years of age and 193 family caregivers. The patients, located in cities in British Columbia, Ontario, ...
2010-10-05
It is time to phase out the use of codeine as a pain reliever because of its significant risks and ineffectiveness as an analgesic, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj101411.pdf.
Although codeine has been used for pain relief for more than 200 years, it has never been subjected to the rigorous regulatory and safety requirements applied to all new drugs and its pharmacokinetics are unpredictable. Genetic variations in patients can mean very different responses to codeine, some with serious ...
2010-10-05
A group of researchers at the University of Bristol have sequestered the potentially fatal breath holding episodes associated with the autistic-spectrum disorder Rett syndrome.
Rett syndrome is a developmental disorder of the brain that affects around 1 in10,000 young girls. One of the worse clinical disorders is the intermittent episodes of breath holding, putting the patient at risk of asphyxiation and further brain damage. Other disorders include repetitive hand movements, digestive and bowel problems, seizures, learning disability with lack of verbal skills and social ...
2010-10-05
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- In a warming 21st century, tropical forests will be at risk from a variety of threats, especially the conversion to cropland to sustain a growing population. A new report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition shows that crop productivity improvements and carbon emission limits together could prevent widespread tropical deforestation over the next 100 years -- but if relying on either one alone, the world is at risk of losing many of its tropical forests.
"We're often concerned with agriculture encroaching on ...
2010-10-05
October 5, 2010 – Radiation therapy is used to treat more than half of all cancer cases, but patient response to therapy can vary greatly. Genetics is increasingly being recognized as a significant contributor to inter-individual response to radiation, but the biology underlying response remains poorly understood. In a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), researchers employed a pharmacogenomics approach to find biomarkers associated with radiation response that could help to more effectively tailor individual cancer treatments in the future.
Response ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Medical home care approach improves efficiency and care at clinic for low-income families
