BIF Patient Labs - The Primary Care Practice of the Future

Overview

How can primary care create much healthier and happier patients, for less money? The Primary Care Practice of the Future is lighting the way.

Primary care – family doctors, pediatricians, and geriatricians - offer a high-impact, low cost way to address the "hot topics" in health care, such as chronic disease management, wellness, mental health integration, end-of-life care, and hospital utilization. However, healthcare experts agree that primary care can't deliver on these promises as it is currently structured, designed, funded and delivered.

Both the way primary care is delivered, and the way the surrounding systems interact and support it must change. But how?

In 2006, BIF partnered with the Rhode Island School of Design to take a fresh look at primary care through the experience of the patient. By walking in the patient's shoes, the team used their insights to create the Customer-Driven Care Model, a set of innovative patient-centered approaches that could create significantly better outcomes in satisfaction, health & wellness, and overall health care cost.

In 2007 BIF will design and launch the Primary Care Practice of the Future, a working practice with real doctors serving real patients in a totally transformed way.

History

In 2006, the Business Innovation Factory collaborated with the Rhode Island School of Design on Customer-Driven Care, a unique effort to understand and improve the pivotal interaction between patients and their primary care physicians.

We sent a multi-disciplinary team of industrial, architectural, and graphic designers into family physician offices and clinics across the state, to see, feel, and experience health care through the patient's eyes.

Through videography, photo observation and interviews, the team captured a snapshot of the primary care interaction taken from the patient's perspective—a perspective not well represented in most conversations about health care innovation.

With diverse input from health care experts to visual artists, the team created a preliminary set of design solutions that make a higher quality interaction and relationship between the patient and the primary care team.

High Points

BIF and our collaborators examining the customer experience had several "A-Ha Moments" on the way to the Customer-Driven Care model.

  • The family doc "owns" a much smaller percentage of the health conversation with the patient than 20 years ago, and must find new ways to make their guidance and expertise valuable.
  • Our current healthcare systems give no information or assistance in matching the values and style of patients and doctors, but that match crucially affects patient health behaviors.
  • Patients and their families long for assistance, facilitation, and trusted advice in navigating today's complex health care systems.

From the detailed findings on the customer experience, three fundamental themes emerged:

  • Meet Me Where I'm At
  • Walk the Path With Me
  • Help Me to Own my Health, Not my Health Care

Results

Whats Next

BIF's Customer-Driven Care model joins several complementary models endorsed by the American College of Physicians and the American Association of Family Physicians. The next challenge is to make these solutions relevant on-the-ground, in the primary care practice, and to understand how potential solutions play together.

More info +

In 2007 BIF will work with state and national collaborators to prototype solutions that transform the patient experience.

Specifically, BIF and our partners will:

  • Create an Innovation Market where all stakeholders can "invest" in the most promising solutions
  • Prototype new ways to match patients to doctors through shared values and styles
  • Prototype new ways to present patients with complex health and self-care information
  • Explore technology and partnering innovations that will increase patient access to their primary care team
  • Explore business model and technology innovations that will enable physicians to coordinate care more effectively and profitably

Over the next year, a blueprint for the Primary Care Practice of the Future will emerge, supported by results from prototypes in live physician practices, and feedback from patients and care professionals.

Model of Customer-Driven Care

  • Overview of the Customer-Driven Care Model (PDF)
  • Click here for a more in-depth look at the process and outcomes of the project's first phase (PDF)
  • Click here for an index of the insightful commentaries written throughout the project's first phase

Other Resources

Syndicate

Join our conversation. Get the latest posts from our weblog BIFSpeak:

 Subscribe in a reader

Or, get the latest weblog posts in your email box:

Enter your email address:

Powered by FeedBurner