Patients Aren’t Widgets; Care Shouldn’t Be Volume-Based

In the current healthcare system, providers are often measured on productivity. The more members they see, the more they are rewarded. But sheer volume is a fundamentally flawed method for measuring success of healthcare.

In a recent article from the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), Patients Aren’t Widgets; Care Shouldn’t Be Volume-Based, Lalita Abhyankar, a family physician based in New York City, encourages us to look beyond the numbers that are used to measure the success of healthcare to get the full picture.

“Patients are humans with insecurities, anxieties, and life circumstances beyond their control,” says Abhyankar. People are not products, and if they are treated as such, health outcomes will inevitably suffer.

The system needs to change and members are starting to ask for it

Members are frustrated with the quality of primary care that’s being delivered. They’re asking for a different healthcare experience. Payers know these frustrations are valid, but struggle to improve member experience and care across their network of varied providers.

The best way to address these frustrations and improve the member experience is to change how care is delivered. Working with a partner to integrate primary care into their health plans is the most effective way to do this. Our solution is called advanced primary care.

How Vera’s advanced primary care model transforms the member experience

With the Vera advanced primary care model, members are treated as individual people with unique needs and goals, rather than widgets on an assembly line. This is achieved through:

• Time-rich appointments:
  Allow people to be heard and providers to understand them beyond their symptoms.
• Primary care providers who have the time, support, and staff:
  To provide most of a person’s care — care that in today’s system is being outsourced to specialists.
• Care coordination:
  To prevent gaps in communication and treatment when specialty care is appropriate, including follow-up and integration into the member’s care plan.
• Accessibility:
  To more providers, smart scheduling, low to no cost visits, convenient locations, and no wait times.
• Integrated behavioral health:
  An integral part of members’ overall health, rather than a separate component of care. Focusing on behavior change is key to achieving health goals.
• Empathetic listening:
  That goes beyond prescriptive medicine, building connections and understanding of a person’s whole health.
• Professional health coaches:
  Trained in the transtheoretical change model to help patients improve their lifestyles and achieve health and life goals.

The Vera advanced primary care model allows payers to provide more value to members by delivering a better experience with improved outcomes.

Create a competitive advantage with the Vera advanced primary care model.