Patient-Physician Connection Key to Better Care Outcomes

A new trend in American health care is the patient-centered medical home, where a team of medical and health professionals work together to treat each individual patient, and is led by a primary-care physician who oversees the effort. Patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) have gained popularity in the five years since the concept was first conceived, yet questions remain about their effectiveness.  David Katz, from the University of Iowa (Iowa, USA), and colleagues evaluated a similar model being tested with military veterans, surveying 4,393 veterans receiving care in medical facilities in the upper Midwest run by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.  In particular, the researchers sought to better understand whether continuity of care—measured by the concentration of visits with a primary-care physician and the duration of care with that physician—led to a patient feeling more satisfied with his or her relationship with the primary doctor.  The team found that it did, mainly because continuity of care seems to yield better communication between the individual and the primary-care doctor and thus a happier patient overall. The lead author observes that: “we have to make sure that during this time of primary-care redesign, that we pay attention to what is happening to the doctor-patient relationship and communication in particular.”