Now is the Time, Here is the Path

Below, are quotes from - Ten Steps to a Patient-Centered Medical Home
Family Practice Management
September/October 2009
Anton J. Kuzel, MD, MHPE


...While these projects have obvious merit, I want to suggest what may be a simpler approach – one that does not depend on new models of financing and that follows a logical series of steps, each building on the one before to develop the capacity and infrastructure for a high-volume practice capable of sophisticated population care and management...



Step 1: Improve documentation and coding.

Step 2: Hire more nurses or medical assistants.

Step 3: Implement advanced access scheduling.

Step 4: Increase the number of patients you see per day.

Step 5: (Optional) Expand hours

Step 6: Buy and implement an EHR.

Step 7: Start doing systematic, population-based care.

Step 8: Buy and implement a patient portal.

Step 9: Work with local health systems to create electronic linkages.

Step 10: Improve management of high-cost patients.


...It seems to me that we have a clear opportunity to make our practices and our health care system much better than they are now, and we may actually already have the needed resources. It’s time to get started...

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