Comprehensive care physicians cut hospitalizations, make patients happier

A study designed to determine whether comprehensive care physicians — who focus on patient care in and out of the hospital — could improve care and reduce hospitalizations — determined the physician model was a success on both counts.

The CCP model involves the same physician providing care for patients in the clinic and in the hospital. Some may even make house calls. Additionally, CCPs lead a team of nurse practitioners, social workers, care coordinators and other specialists who are apt to address high-risk patients' needs. Each physician serves as the primary care provider for about 200 patients.

From November 2012 to June 2016, 2,000 Medicare patients with chronic health problems, most who had been hospitalized at least once in the previous year, enrolled in the University of Chicago Medicine study. Half of study participants were assigned to "standard care," which connected them with a hospital-based primary care physician who saw patients in the clinic, but did not directly care for them if they were admitted to the hospital. The remaining half of the study participants were assigned to one of five CCPs who cared for them in clinic visits and also saw them in the hospital.

The study found the CCP model improved the continuity of patient care, particularly during and after a hospital stay and had a positive effect on the patient-physician relationship.

"Hospitalization rates for CCP patients were 15 to 22 percent lower than for standard care patients," said study director David Meltzer, PhD, MD, in a news release.

CCP patients also reported "a better experience," Dr. Meltzer said, adding these patients gave their physicians higher scores on a federal patient satisfaction survey.

This program "may improve patient experience and health status while substantially reducing utilization for patients at increased risk for hospitalization," the study authors concluded. "The CCP model warrants further exploration through efforts to implement it in additional settings and rigorously evaluate its effects on outcomes and costs."

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