The study, consisting of 1045 practices and 284,000 patients, is a combination of survey responses regarding practice characteristics, and Medicare claims data used to calculate rates of ambulatory care-sensitive admissions (ACSA). As the title implies, Lawrence Casalino and colleagues found that practices with one or two physicians had 30% lower rates of these presumably preventable admissions. But this was by no means the only finding, because in general, physician owned practices, as opposed to hospital owned practices, regardless of size, had lower ACSA rates. Furthermore, the study also found that all sorts of innovative practice models foisted on physicians nowadays have marginal and sometimes negative effects on ACSA rates: “Neither the patient-centered medical home score, nor pay-for-performance incentives, nor the acceptance of risk for the cost of hospital care for the practice’s patients was significantly associated with the ambulatory care–sensitive admission rate … . Practices exposed to public reporting had somewhat higher rates.”
We should clarify here that the study uses a proprietary definition of “patient-centered medical home scores”, which is a narrow electronic-industrial subset of the broadly accepted comprehensive definition of the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH), and as such, unlikely to be implemented in small practices. Important PCMH aspects that are widespread among small practices are not included in these “scores”. For example, enhanced access to care is measured exclusively by availability of group visits and e-mail communications with physicians, without accounting for the more conventional same-day or after-hours appointments, and two fundamental aspects of classic PCMH, personal physician and whole person orientation, are inexplicably left out altogether. In addition, practices with 1 or 2 physicians are handicapped right out of the gate for being automatically deemed to lack “primary care teams”. Small practices also get dinged for lack of “rapid-cycle quality improvement strategy” and not participating in “quality improvement collaboratives”.
Another thing that should be noted is that this new study is based on 2008 data, so six years ago, physician owned practices were providing better care at lower costs, and the smaller the practice the more efficient it was. Between then and now, we enacted legislation and a slew of regulations pushing for massive consolidation of health systems, which in turn triggered a most spectacular shopping spree for private practices, converting large swaths of the health care delivery system into a less effective and more expensive model of care. To top it all off, we added, and are still enthusiastically piling on, regulatory requirements for all the things that Casalino and colleagues found largely inconsequential, and in the case of public reporting, somewhat detrimental to the outcomes we seek. We are spending billions of dollars on transforming our health care system into one that is more expensive and arguably of lower quality.
Previous studies (that you probably never heard of either), are somewhat inadvertently supporting the findings published by Casalino and colleagues. For example, a 2011 study by John Kralewski and colleagues showing that investment in improved quality of care for patients with diabetes can indeed reduce costs of care, reached several secondary conclusions that may have gotten lost in the shuffle. The study found that “[p]hysician-owned practices had significantly lower costs than hospital-owned practices”, and that “[l]arger practices and those with more on-site support services had significantly higher costs”. It also noted that neither the presence, nor the advanced expertise in use, of electronic medical records had significant influence on costs for the studied patients, while a “higher ratio of nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the practice increased costs”. Finally, a closer look at the results indicates that physician-owned practices “achieved more of their cost savings by providing higher-quality care than practices owned by hospitals or other agencies”.
In spite of the pretty straightforward evidence presented by Casalino and colleagues, and others before them, the authors seem troubled by the “unexpected” results, “since small practices presumably have fewer resources to hire staff to help them implement systematic processes to improve the care they provide”. And here we arrive at the crux of our health care dilemma. For decades, brilliant minds in health care have been consistently driving policy changes based on the assumption that health care is a “system”, and as such, it should be improved by well-established methodologies borrowed from other systems (e.g. Deming cycles, Lean Six Sigma, etc.). Small practices were obviously ill suited for such endeavors and hence the tacit agreement that most physicians should transition to larger medical settings, preferably hospital owned, so that improvement cycles can be uniformly applied across the factory floor. As a variety of integrated health systems began reporting success with these methodologies, the issue was considered settled and the “system” began moving full steam ahead.
Except that the baseline was all wrong. While millions and billions of dollars were being diverted from direct patient care and spent instead on industrializing health care, the much derided Marcus Welby model of care, in its stark simplicity, was running circles around the heavy machinery with gazillions of moving parts, put in place by health care reform. The only question remaining now is whether the damage is reversible. Obviously, the large amounts of money that were sent down the drain are not recoverable, but perhaps it’s not too late to cut our losses and stop throwing good money after bad. The Casalino study is a snapshot of the situation in 2008, but sadly the same may not be true today.
After years of trying to keep up with regulations, incentives, penalties, mandated clunky technology, performance reporting, overt and covert price discrimination, and increasingly untenable reimbursement complexities, all of which were shown to do nothing for effectiveness and/or efficiency, many physicians in small practice are demoralized, frustrated or have completely given up. As a group, independent doctors are getting older and medical schools, turned trade schools for “health care systems which are now the major employer of doctors” are busy preparing students “to focus on populations of patients rather than individual patients”, with full support from the American Medical Association..
It may very well be too late to recover what was lost, but this realization does not explain the conclusions reached by Casalino and colleagues from this, perhaps too little too late, study. In spite of the data presented, we are told that “[s]mall practices have many obvious disadvantages”, where none were discussed in the body of the article, and that “[i]t would be a mistake to romanticize them”. The article also suggests, and rightly so, that more research is needed, and perplexingly also that small practices should be helped with resources and services to implement precisely the processes that two paragraphs above were shown to make no difference in outcomes.
I do understand the difficulties inherent in reversing position on a long held belief, but just like romanticizing the country doctor of days gone by is indeed a mistake, dismissing the data based on romantic notions about Toyota’s car manufacturing business, is an equally grave scientific error. And in response to this study, the silence of the health care research community, as well as the mainstream media, which is supposed to act in the public interest, is outright deafening. I wonder why....
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is mandating that insurance companies take as much money from people as they are presumed to be able to pay, then proceed to top it off with taxpayer subsidies to make up for any shortcomings, and engage in these activities without discrimination based on formerly diagnosed illnesses. For their part, the people are mandated to make these payments, whether collectively through the government, or individually through their own pocketbooks, or most often both. While the ACA prescribes in great detail the mandatory flow of money from the people to health insurance corporations, and the services due to the people in return, it leaves the definition of the means by which these services are to be provided largely to the wisdom of the corporations, as long as they can show that, theoretically, the services can be provided. And indeed in many cases, many people, in practically every state, are now receiving excellent theoretical coverage for theoretical medical services.
If you happen to have cancer, and are looking to purchase health insurance, no insurer can turn you down or charge you more because of your preexisting condition. Thanks to the generosity of the ACA, you can select any one of the diverse insurance plans offered by each payer. You can choose a plan with a tailored, high-performing network focused on keeping you healthy, which includes almost no cancer hospitals and no cancer specialists, or you can buy a lusher and more expensive plan that includes some cancer facilities and doctors, or you can buy an exorbitantly priced health insurance plan that includes the likes of MD Anderson Cancer Center. If your cancer is found after you enrolled in that affordable plan for healthy people, you can always decide to switch to a plan that treats cancer and pay the difference. It’s all up to you, and the cash in your wallet, because now you have choices you never had before the ACA was enacted. This has absolutely nothing to do with preexisting conditions. It has to do with high-performance, tailoring, focusing and all sorts of other patient-centered features and benefits.
With great choice, comes great responsibility. All but the most expensive plans available for your selection on the Affordable Care marketplace, and most employer based insurance plans as well, are consumer driven. Basically you get to make all the big decisions regarding your health care and you need to empower yourself to rise to the occasion if and when disease or accidental misfortune materializes in spite of the system’s best efforts to keep you healthy. For those with little expertise in insurance jargon the best illustration may come from the home mortgage market. See, your affordable health insurance plan is very similar to the pre-2008 affordable mortgage for your pre-2009 home. In addition to your affordable monthly payments, there is a balloon payment due the day you are diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, or just slip and fall while cleaning the gutters. This payment is also known as your high deductible, and unlike your mortgage balloon payment, your high deductible is a self-renewing source of anguish, which springs back to life every January 1st.
There are handy calculators available to let you estimate the size of your balloon payments, and hospitals are setting up specialty services to evaluate a new vital sign called “liquidity” before any procedures are undertaken. Think of it as an expanded pre-op clearance. If your liquidity is lower than the price of your treatment, hospitals may help you elevate liquidity levels through various financial instruments, such as credit card debt, and refinancing for your balloon payment. It is not by accident that entities with brilliant track records in financial markets, such as Citigroup, are seizing the emerging opportunities in the brand new health care financing market, and are introducing innovative solutions “designed to simplify and enhance the healthcare payment experience”. Be on the lookout for more innovation here, since this market is projected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the decade.
To bridge the gap between our vibrant financial industry and our old and tired health care system, a new diagnosis seems to be in order. Hypoliquidemia is a disease of the financial system. It is characterized by low levels of liquid cash in your bank account, low credit scores and low socioeconomic status (SES). Other signs and symptoms may include anxiety, depression and various phobias. Hypoliquidemia is diagnosed through a series of evidence based standardized screenings, ported from the financial industry and administered by your whole-person oriented care team. Moderate hypoliquidemia is severely exacerbated by prolonged encounters with the medical system, and although not a life threatening condition in otherwise healthy individuals, it may be lethal when comorbid with other severe illnesses. The secondhand effects of hypoliquidemia can be extremely debilitating to hospitals and physicians who fail to take the necessary financial stewardship precautions when treating large numbers of hypoliquidemic patients.
Physicians, primary care docs in particular, are at increased risk of being affected by the spread of hypoliquidemia, since they are usually the first point of contact for patients entering the health system, and also because they lack the sophisticated diagnostic tools needed to measure liquidity levels before medical services are provided. The most likely effect of treating low liquidity populations consists of increasing levels of uncollectable bad debt. The only known protection mechanisms for individual physicians are to require cash or credit card payments at the time of service, or to avoid encounters with potentially hypoliquidemic patients altogether, i.e. those with ballooning high deductible insurance plans. Finally, according to a must read article in Managed Care, hospitals are already setting up “financial screening techniques that stratify access to their services” because “having an insurance policy will not guarantee access to care in the future”.
Hypoliquidemia is reaching epidemic proportions in the U.S. and there is no cure in sight, and there will be no mercy either. For the desperate, there is an old folk remedy which has been used successfully by inadequately liquid citizens in need of nursing home care in their old age. To attenuate the effects of hypoliquidemia on serious comorbid conditions, you need to counterintuitively drive your liquidity levels to zero. You need to quit your job, assuming you have one, and deplete any and all meager assets you may still have. Since regulatory climate is extremely important to treating hypoliquidemia, you may have to move to a region with suitable environmental controls. Once all these steps are executed successfully, you should be able to qualify for Medicaid and gain access to academic centers of excellence, including places like MD Anderson Cancer Center, if that’s what you need to survive. The most common side effects of this remedy are: premature death before the course of treatment could be completed, persistent exacerbation of hypoliquidemic symptoms, suicidal ideations and universal health care delusions.
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