The 3rd Annual Community Practitioner Program Meeting was held on Friday, October 21 in conjunction with the NC Medical Society’s Annual Meeting. The day kicked off with a presentation to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees by the NC Physician Institute for Quality Enhancement Surgical Fellows:
James Hooten, MD
Leo Spector, MD
Peter Gilmer, MD
Participants of Community Practitioner Innovative Practice Program presented information on their practices and communities. Dr. Christian Lige and Dr. John Sanchez were featured.
A luncheon was hosted for over 90 people – CPP participants, Board of Trustees, CPP Advisory Committee members, and Schweitzer Foundation and NC Advanced Health Programs Bernstein Fellows. Chip Baggett, Director Legislative Relations with the North Carolina Medical Society and Dr. Eugenie Komives, VP and Senior Medical Director from Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina each presented during the luncheon.
Following the luncheon, Brian Toomey, Chief Executive Officer Piedmont Health Services and Marianne Ratcliffe, Director Piedmont Health SeniorCare were featured speakers for the educational seminar, “Team Based Approach to Health Care”. Attendees met in small discussion groups and were asked to report their findings back to the larger group. Questions they were asked to consider in their discussions were:
- Is team based care a good notion? Forgetting what its advocates say, what do YOU see are its real benefits and what are its challenges?
- If the team based care was expanded within your practice, how do you see this would look? What disciplines would you like to see more involved in routine systems of care?
- Given your practice’s situation, what disciplines do you think would be difficult to include within care teams?
- What would the hurdles be to expanding team based care within your practice? How could these hurdles be overcome?
- What members of the health care team (e.g., mental health worker, health educator, pharmacist, dula, physical therapist, social worker) for your patients’ care do you think can be included from within your practice versus formally linked to within the community?
Some of the ideas identified that participants would do to promote a team based approach to health care in their own practices were:
- Consider the idea of putting a mental health person and/or case manager in their office.
- Team trainings for staff development and utilizing concepts of “behavioral interviewing“ when hiring for all positions.
- Think about interactions, best practices and policies to see how they could build off each other.
- Better communication efforts between interdisciplinary models.
- Try to form shared resources of specialty services with other primary care offices in the community.
- Involve patients more as part of the team and plan.
- Advocate for changing medical care into health care.
