Primary Care Teams: Past, Present and Future

Product type: Commentary published in the Journal of American Board of Family Medicine, June 2020.

Authors: Erin Fraher, PhD, MPP

• Structural changes to primary care require retraining physicians and other providers to more effectively function in teams, remapping workflows, and redesigning care to allow for more collaboration between physicians and other health care professionals
• Fraher gives an overview of changing team dynamics and evolving roles of RNs, social workers, LPNs, and medical assistants.
• The commentary concludes with factors effecting team composition–from health care affiliation, to differing models of care, to reimbursement structure– and the role team composition may play in professional burnout.
• Future research on teams in family medicine practices needs to delve beneath the numbers to investigate how evolving payment models, such as capitation and risk-based models of care, affect not only the skill mix but also the content of care provided by different health professionals on primary care teams.

Read the full article here.