Barbara Starfield on Family Medicine and the PCMH

The work of Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, has been enormously effective in establishing the value of primary care in general and family medicine in particular. One testimony to this is the AAFP’s list of 100 articles demonstrating the value of family medicine; she wrote or coauthored 18 of the 100 articles.

Given her strong support of primary care, it’s reasonable to want to know her thoughts on the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH), a concept that seems likely to shape the future of the specialty. In an opinion piece written for the July/August issue of Family Practice Management, she sounds somewhat dubious of the direction the PCMH is taking: “Proposals for the PCMH are not very patient-centered. They are justified on the basis of evidence regarding the benefits of primary care, but the criteria for assessment of PCMHs, such as those promulgated by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, concern organizational features such as electronic health records, computerized guidelines and amorphous 'teams,' none of which have been demonstrated to be pursuant to good primary care.”

To read more, see the prepublication version of her essay.

Posted at 11:59AM Jun 01, 2009 by Bob Edsall  |  Comments[1]