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Integrating Community Health Workers Into Health Care Teams Without Coopting Them

Author/s: 
Garfield, Cheryl, Kangovi, Shreya

Community health workers (CHWs) are trusted laypeople who help their communities achieve health and well-being. For generations, they’ve worked in church basements, shelters, and food pantries to address a variety of health and social needs. In recent years, this workforce has captured the attention of health care organizations looking to hit value-based payment targets that are heavily influenced by the social determinants of health. As a result, they increasingly are transitioning from their grassroots, community-based origins to become integrated members of health care teams. The marriage of community health and formal health care is powerful, but it’s also tricky. If CHWs lose their identity and become medicalized, their effectiveness in the community is lessened. Health care leaders must grapple with a fundamental question: How do we integrate a grassroots workforce into health care without totally coopting it? We explore this tension and offer guidance for health care leaders, based on our experience with developing the IMPaCT CHW model, which has served 10,000 patients in greater Philadelphia and provides tools and technical assistance to more than 1,000 health care organizations across the country. 

The challenges facing CHWs as they become part of health care teams can be thought of as falling into four categories: agenda, identity, scope of work, and integration. 

Keywords 
community health workers primary health care

Submit a Suggestion for a New Evidence Review

What health care decisions are you struggling with? Would a review of the scientific evidence help inform this decision? Share your ideas with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) Program. AHRQ will use these ideas to determine the focus of its evidence reports for next fiscal year (i.e., AHRQ can provide an evidence report at no cost). Your input is important!

Propose your evidence report topics by June 7.

Keywords 
primary health care evidence-based medicine

The 10 Building Blocks of High-Performing Primary Care

Author/s: 
Bodenheimer, Thomas, Ghorob, Amireh, Willard-Grace, Rachel, Grumbach, Kevin

Our experiences studying exemplar primary care practices, and our work assisting other practices to become more patient centered, led to a formulation of the essential elements of primary care, which we call the 10 building blocks of high-performing primary care. The building blocks include 4 foundational elements-engaged leadership, data-driven improvement, empanelment, and team-based care-that assist the implementation of the other 6 building blocks-patient-team partnership, population management, continuity of care, prompt access to care, comprehensiveness and care coordination, and a template of the future. The building blocks, which represent a synthesis of the innovative thinking that is transforming primary care in the United States, are both a description of existing high-performing practices and a model for improvement.

Keywords 
medical physician’s practice patterns practice management primary health care

Brief physician advice for problem alcohol drinkers. A randomized controlled trial in community-based primary care practices

Author/s: 
Fleming, Michael F., Barry, Kristen L., Manwell, Linda B., Johnson, Kristen, London, Richard

OBJECTIVE:

Project TrEAT (Trial for Early Alcohol Treatment) was designed to test the efficacy of brief physician advice in reducing alcohol use and health care utilization in problem drinkers.

DESIGN:

Randomized controlled clinical trial with 12-month follow-up.

SETTING:

A total of 17 community-based primary care practices (64 physicians) located in 10 Wisconsin counties.

PARTICIPANTS:

Of the 17695 patients screened for problem drinking, 482 men and 292 women met inclusion criteria and were randomized into a control (n=382) or an experimental (n=392) group. A total of 723 subjects (93%) participated in the 12-month follow-up procedures.

INTERVENTION:

The intervention consisted of two 10- to 15-minute counseling visits delivered by physicians using a scripted workbook that included advice, education, and contracting information.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

Alcohol use measures, emergency department visits, and hospital days.

RESULTS:

There were no significant differences between groups at baseline on alcohol use, age, socioeconomic status, smoking status, rates of depression or anxiety, frequency of conduct disorders, lifetime drug use, or health care utilization. At the time of the 12-month follow-up, there were significant reductions in 7-day alcohol use (mean number of drinks in previous 7 days decreased from 19.1 at baseline to 11.5 at 12 months for the experimental group vs 18.9 at baseline to 15.5 at 12 months for controls; t=4.33; P<.001), episodes of binge drinking (mean number of binge drinking episodes during previous 30 days decreased from 5.7 at baseline to 3.1 at 12 months for the experimental group vs 5.3 at baseline to 4.2 at 12 months for controls; t=2.81; P<.001), and frequency of excessive drinking (percentage drinking excessively in previous 7 days decreased from 47.5% at baseline to 17.8% at 12 months for the experimental group vs 48.1% at baseline to 32.5% at 12 months for controls; t=4.53; P<.001). The chi2 test of independence revealed a significant relationship between group status and length of hospitalization over the study period for men (P<.01).

CONCLUSIONS:

This study provides the first direct evidence that physician intervention with problem drinkers decreases alcohol use and health resource utilization in the US health care system.

Keywords 
alcohol alcoholism counseling primary health care

Six Building Blocks: A Team-Based Approach to Improving Opioid Management in Primary Care

Most patients taking opioids for chronic pain are managed by primary care providers and their staff. Many practices are looking for help in managing their patients using chronic opioid therapy. To meet this need, AHRQ funded the Six Building Blocks project  through grant number R18HS0237850. Additional funding was provided by Washington State Department of Health subcontract (HED23124) of Cooperative U17CE002734, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Keywords 
opioids chronic pain primary health care patient care

Start-Up and Ongoing Practice Expenses of Behavioral Health and Primary Care Integration Interventions in the Advancing Care Together (ACT) Program

Author/s: 
Wallace, Neal T., Cohen, Deborah J., Gunn, Rose, Beck, Arne, Melek, Steve, Bechtold, Donald, Green, Larry A.

PURPOSE:

Provide credible estimates of the start-up and ongoing effort and incremental practice expenses for the Advancing Care Together (ACT) behavioral health and primary care integration interventions.

METHODS:

Expenditure data were collected from 10 practice intervention sites using an instrument with a standardized general format that could accommodate the unique elements of each intervention.

RESULTS:

Average start-up effort expenses were $44,076 and monthly ongoing effort expenses per patient were $40.39. Incremental expenses averaged $20,788 for start-up and $4.58 per patient for monthly ongoing activities. Variations in expenditures across practices reflect the differences in intervention specifics and organizational settings. Differences in effort to incremental expenditures reflect the extensive use of existing resources in implementing the interventions.

CONCLUSIONS:

ACT program incremental expenses suggest that widespread adoption would likely have a relatively modest effect on overall health systems expenditures. Practice effort expenses are not trivial and may pose barriers to adoption. Payers and purchasers interested in attaining widespread adoption of integrated care must consider external support to practices that accounts for both incremental and effort expense levels. Existing knowledge transfer mechanisms should be employed to minimize developmental start-up expenses and payment reform focused toward value-based, Triple Aim-oriented reimbursement and purchasing mechanisms are likely needed.

Keywords 
delivery of health care integrated primary care primary health care behavioral medicine

Clinician Staffing, Scheduling, and Engagement Strategies Among Primary Care Practices Delivering Integrated Care

Author/s: 
Davis, Melinda M., Balasubramanian, Bijal A., Cifuentes, Maribel, Hall, Jennifer, Gunn, Rose, Fernald, Douglas, Gilchrist, Emma, Miller, Benjamin F., DeGruy, Frank, III

PURPOSE:

To examine the interrelationship among behavioral health clinician (BHC) staffing, scheduling, and a primary care practice's approach to delivering integrated care.

METHODS:

Observational cross-case comparative analysis of 17 primary care practices in the United States focused on implementation of integrated care. Practices varied in size, ownership, geographic location, and integrated care experience. A multidisciplinary team analyzed documents, practice surveys, field notes from observation visits, implementation diaries, and semistructured interviews using a grounded theory approach.

RESULTS:

Across the 17 practices, staffing ratios ranged from 1 BHC covering 0.3 to 36.5 primary care clinicians (PCCs). BHC scheduling varied from 50-minute prescheduled appointments to open, flexible schedules slotted in 15-minute increments. However, staffing and scheduling patterns generally clustered in 2 ways and enabled BHCs to be engaged by referral or warm handoff. Five practices predominantly used warm handoffs to engage BHCs and had higher BHC-to-PCC staffing ratios; multiple BHCs on staff; and shorter, more flexible BHC appointment schedules. Staffing and scheduling structures that enabled warm handoffs supported BHC engagement with patients concurrent with the identification of behavioral health needs. Twelve practices primarily used referrals to engage BHCs and had lower BHC-to-PCC staffing ratios and BHC schedules prefilled with visits. This enabled some BHCs to bill for services, but also made them less accessible to PCCs in when patients presented with behavioral health needs during a clinical encounter. Three of these practices were experimenting with open scheduling and briefer BHC visits to enable real-time access while managing resources.

CONCLUSION:

Practices' approaches to PCC-BHC staffing, scheduling, and delivery of integrated care mutually influenced each other and were shaped by the local context. Practice leaders, educators, clinicians, funders, researchers, and policy makers must consider these factors as they seek to optimize integrated systems of care.

Keywords 
integrated behavioral medicine delivery of health care primary health care primary care

How to Excel at Access — and Why It Matters

Author/s: 
Mils, Terry

Health care spending in the United States totaled $3.3 trillion in 2016, more than double the amount spent in 2000. Twenty percent of the cost went toward physician services, with primary care accounting for approximately 7 percent.

These rising costs have real consequences for patients. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that, because of cost, 67 percent of the uninsured and 21 percent of the insured had forgone needed medical care. To address costs, payers are increasingly adopting reimbursement models that reward or penalize physicians based on their ability to keep costs down.

Now here’s the good news: When it comes to rising health care costs, we in primary care are not the main problem, but we are a key part of the solution. This article will explain how improving access to primary care can reduce costs and the steps practices should begin taking now.

Keywords 
primary health care access
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