Dive Brief:
- At its annual meeting, the American Medical Association voted to adopt a policy June 9 that endorses physician-led team-based health care. Under this approach, the physician is in charge of a team of health professionals, including nurses, social workers and pharmacists, working together to deliver primary care services to patients, manage any chronic conditions and keep folks out of the hospital.
- Adopting this policy is part of a broader AMA initiative to improve quality of care and reduce health-care costs by using value-based care models, the physician group says.
- Specifically, the AMA says the policy will "help physicians transition to new care models by promoting flexibility to develop practice designs based on physician needs, the populations they serve, relevant state laws and protection from the burdens that would come from a one-size-fits-all approach."
Dive Insight:
Explaining its new policy, the AMA said it believes that the "ultimate responsibility of patient medical care rests with the physician." Thus, the group said, it only makes sense that physicians "maintain authority for patient treatment in any team-care arrangement" to ensure patient safety and high quality care.
Industry experts have been saying it for years: As the market shifts from fragmentation toward highly integrated systems, hospitals and doctors must overcome tensions and each must "give up something" or else their collaborations on value-based care models won't work. If they find ways to work well together to provide better care at less cost, then they should get more business even with the general shrinking of inpatient care over time; that is important since ACOs must keep volume high or risk losing money.
