Leading the Model for Change: Optimizing the Design of Primary Care Teams to Improve Value-Based Care

As a healthcare management consultant, Matthew Sangphet MPH’20 has worked with hospitals and healthcare systems across the U.S. to bridge the gap between clinical innovations in patient care, complex healthcare data, and organizational growth. His current focus is on optimizing the design of primary care teams at Mayo Clinic, one of the largest integrated, not-for-profit medical group practices in the world.

“To date, research on primary care staffing models has focused on team-based transformational models of primary care to meet the triple or quadruple aim for optimizing health systems,” says Sangphet. “However, there is little advancement in care team staffing configurations and ideal practice models required to deliver high quality, low cost, comprehensive primary care.”

A team-based care model brings together a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, nurses, allied health staff, and other specialized staff who work together to ensure patients’ needs are met in the safest, most effective, and efficient way possible. An optimized care team establishes how each member of the team can add the most value to direct patient care while diversifying the relationships and touchpoints a patient has with their clinic and improving patient care and outcomes.

At the Mayo Clinic, Sangphet developed an Excel-based primary care staffing tool that is designed to provide optimal clinical staffing ratios for primary care sites that are scalable based on patient populations and geographies. The model incorporates panel capacity considerations, potential care team efficacy metrics, and care team factors. Key drivers include care team composition, service area population dynamics, provider panel sizing, service area payor mix, as well as provider revenue and expense drivers.

“This model will help guide leadership and administrators to an optimal state for primary care staffing with existing and future sites,” says Sangphet. “It will also provide a useful forecast framework for primary care team composition and site strategy."

POSTED 2/10/2020 AT 12:54 PM IN #practicum