UAMS Earns National Recognition for Team-Care Program

By David Robinson

The Department of Family and Preventive Medicine in the UAMS College of Medicine and the Family Medical Center’s Patient-Centered Medical Home™ garnered Level 3 recognition – the highest level – from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. The program emphasizes a team concept for each patient to provide comprehensive services, from making appointments to medical care to patient education to follow up communications, and assures high quality patient care by following and measuring national patient-centered quality parameters, said Daniel Knight, M.D., chairman of the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine in the UAMS College of Medicine.

The committee, a leading private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality, assesses applicants on nine standards, including access and communication, patient tracking and registry functions, care management, patient self-management support, electronic prescribing, test tracking, referral tracking, performance reporting and improvement, and advanced electronic communications.

“A key feature of the medical home is having a highly coordinated physician-led team to take care of each patient,” Knight said. “So, for example, we have begun what we call group ‘clinical huddles’ twice a day to discuss the cases of patients who are coming in and to plan for their visit.”

The team model provides greater support for physicians and a better working environment for all staff members. For patients it means that more than one person is focused on their care, he said.

The Patient-Centered Medical Home program started in 2009 as a mechanism for providing more team-based care and improved access to quality care for patients. Knight credited Family Medical Center administrator Paula White and medical director Jamie Howard, M.D., for assisting with creation the program.

Many of the medical home components already were in place at the Family Medical Center, including electronic medical records, electronic prescribing and other information technology that helps ensure high-quality care, Knight said. Patient, family and caregiver education and support is provided, and additional support groups and patient-education groups are being developed. An additional nurse helps patients through phone consultations.

As its name implies, a medical home is designed to be the place a patient goes to get the care they need and to access all of the services they need in a timely and efficient manner, Knight said. “We have always worked toward that goal, but the medical home takes coordinated care to a higher level.”

The patient-centered medical home model has been endorsed by many medical organizations including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Osteopathic Association.

Knight said the concept originated in pediatrics many years ago as a way to take care of children with multiple medical problems, but efforts are under way nationally to promote the development of medical homes in broader practices.

UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Related Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a 540,000-square-foot hospital; a statewide network of regional centers; and six institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute and the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging. UAMS has 2,775 students and 748 medical residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including nearly 1,150 physicians who provide medical care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS’ Area Health Education Centers throughout the state. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com.