Effectively Coordinating Care

In the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Care Coordination Measures Atlas, they say, “Care coordination means different things to different people; no consensus definition has fully evolved.”  Different people have different perspectives, depending on whether they are patients, providers, or other people involved in the health care system.  It can be compounded depending on whether you are dealing with primary care or the emergency room.

Recently, the Aetna Foundation announced $750,000 in grants for Studies to Improve Coordination of Health Care.  CHC was awarded “to develop and validate a measurement toolkit to evaluate care coordination specifically for primary care practices providing outpatient care for underserved populations.”  This was followed by a meet and greet with folks from CHC, the Aetna Foundation, as well as people from Uconn’s Connecticut Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (CICATS).  It was a great meeting for an exciting project.

Meanwhile, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has announced a New Program to Help Primary Care Practices Use Their Workforce More Effectively.  Properly measured coordinated care is bound to fit into the effective use of primary care workforces and the two projects will hopefully complement each other nicely.

Underlying all of this is CHC’s commitment to building a world class primary health care system, that is committed to caring for special populations, and that is focused on improving health outcomes for our patients as well as building healthy communities.