The study find that the Lowering costs and improving patient outcomes are common goals for most health care providers. A new study from Creighton University School of Medicine and Center for Inter professional Practice, Education and Research, published Aug. 12 in the Annals of Family Medicine, yielded a reduction in health care costs in an especially vulnerable group: high risk patients. Therefore The study, “Lessons From Practice Transformation;” involved patients at a family practice clinic at CHI Creighton University Medical Center-University Campus near downtown.
Most health care providers
The clinic was specifically designed around something call the inter professional collaborative practice (ICPC) model. Our study demonstrate that inter professional education and collaborative practice provided in a primary care residency-based program are associated with reductions of 16.7% in emergency room visits; 17.7% in hospitalizations, 0.8%in hemoglobin A1c levels, and 48.2% in total patient charges.” Thomas P Guck, PhD; psychologist and professor in Family Medicine, Creighton University; and lead author of the study
Guck said these results came about primarily because, They are teaching future providers to work in teams;” said Guck. To get an idea of what that teamwork looks like; walk into the downtown area Creighton family practice clinic. There are patients checking in, some are sitting down waiting to be see, nothing appears out of the ordinary. Behind the patient rooms is where the transformation begins. There’s a medical assistant working on a computer next to a third-year family practice medical resident.
Creighton family practice clinic
A faculty physician is consulting with a nurse about a patient, right next to the social worker speaking with an occupational therapist. Because There’s a pharmacy next to the waiting room; and ran occupational and physical therapy gym on the first floor. The patient has access to all of these services and clinicians in one place. It is know as the inter professional collaborative practice (IPCP) model.
There are plenty of studies that show inter professional collaborative care can lead to better, less costly outcomes in specific patient populations, like those with diabetes or heart disease; but until now no one has studied whether this model of care offers these same improvements in a diverse patient population like what you see in Family Practice. But the Creighton study showed a nearly 50% reduction in patient charges in one year.
“That’s a cost savings of more than $4 million,” said Joy Doll, OTD, occupational therapist, executive director of Creighton’s Center for Inter professional Practice, Education and Research (CIPER), and one of the study’s authors. Doll said those savings came about mostly because there are far fewer visits to the emergency room and patients are hospitalize less often.