Monday 23 February 2015

Coordination, integration (in Spanish Health Care System)


Each of the care system levels has become strong in a particular feature in Spain: in primary care, it has been the role of the gatekeeper; in hospitals, the hierarchization of medical services and in the socio-sanitary area, the offer of post-acute beds. And if we look at what these strengths have been translated into, we will rapidly agree that the primary care has achieved a performance of proximity and effectiveness in prevention, the hospitals have obtained very satisfactory levels of resolution in acute diseases and the socio-sanitary has contributed the essential decompression to the system.

These same strengths, which are certainly well recognized, become rigidities when new requirements that somehow question the status quo, emerge. However, I will demonstrate in 4 examples how the health system has been able to offer imaginative responses, without any hassle:

Monday 16 February 2015

Adding value to doctor's remuneration








NEJM devotes an editorial and a couple of articles (they can be downloaded for free) to the new model for doctor’s remuneration by Medicare. This is a matter specific to the Americans, you’ll say. Therefore, it wasn’t necessary to choose it as this tweet to discuss. Although I have to admit that in these aspects of innovations in cataloguing and financing models, sometimes the Americans are right, as was in the case of DRG, then we all rush to import them into our systems.

Monday 9 February 2015

Adjusting contracts to the value provided by services








Dr. Josep Vidal-Alaball is a family doctor trained in England and passionate about public and community health. He’s a keen Twitterer, very active in innovation.

The link in Dr. Vidal Alaball’s tweet, directs us to the English National Health Service’ website, named "Right Care", where it is stated that the purpose of the health system is to deliver more value to people’s health and, according to this statement, proposes that service contracts should be adjusted in-line with this value (Commissioning for value) and clarifies that the NHS adopts Michael Porter’s definition of value: clinical outcomes in relation to costs.

Monday 2 February 2015

"The values of clinical practice" Campaign for doctors in training

The Clinical Management Section of the Catalan Society of Health Care Management (SCGS) has just released a video to promote the values of the clinical practice among physicians in training.

To activate English subtitles go to "settings" in the lower right banner




I would like to highlight 10 keys that, according to the video, should allow a generational change in the practice of medicine:
  1. Learn to listen patients and appreciate what their circumstances are.
  2. Forget about persuasion and learn the technique of motivational interviewing.
  3. Help patients to make clinical decisions for themselves.
  4. Rate the burden of treatment and learn to deprescribe whenever necessary.
  5. Take the time for clinical reasoning and adopt the Bayesian probabilistic thinking.
  6. Request tests that make sense clinically, thinking about the value they will bring.
  7. Learn to teamwork, specially when facing complex patients.
  8. Watch out for overdiagnosis when practicing prevention and share it with target people.
  9. Incorporate palliative methodology in your clinical practice and know how to have the proper conversation about the end of life with patients and their families.
  10. Know how to get the "Right Care" sources.
Main "Right Care" sources
From this blog I wish the campaign "The values of clinical practice", promoted by the Clinical Management Section of the SCGS, to echo, both in medical schools and medical residents programmes.


Jordi Varela
Editor