News Briefs: Practice Management Updates

This roundup includes the following brief practice management updates:

The Academy has launched a new module in its performance improvement program known as METRIC, or Measuring, Evaluating, and Translating Research Into Care.

The latest offering -- Hypertension: Improving Patient Care -- is similar in format to the other six METRIC modules available on the Academy's Web site and will help physicians gauge their management of hypertension as they measure and improve patient outcomes.

According the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, hypertension is a growing health problem in the United States, with more than 72 million adult diagnoses. The institute notes that hypertension contributes to a number of life-threatening conditions seen throughout the country, including 77 percent of strokes, 74 percent of heart failure cases and 67 percent of heart attacks.

Family physicians play a major role in helping to control Americans' hypertension. CDC statistics indicate that nearly 25 percent of patient visits for hypertension are made to family physicians -- more than to any other medical specialists.

On completing the METRIC hypertension module, physicians are eligible to receive as many as 20 Prescribed credits toward AAFP CME requirements, while at the same time fulfilling the requirements for Part IV of the American Board of Family Medicine's Maintenance of Certification Program for Family Physicians. The METRIC program also is available to residency programs.

Support for the METRIC hypertension module is made possible by an educational grant through the AAFP Foundation from The Atlantic Philanthropies.

A team of independent evaluators analyzing data from TransforMED's national demonstration project on the patient-centered medical home recently released a second round of preliminary findings that examine the use of health information technology and chronic disease registries.

Evaluators report that a range of family medicine practices, including small and rural practices, can implement health information technology, such as electronic health records, or EHRs; Web portals; and chronic disease registries. Specifically, 14 of the 31 practices in the pilot implemented patient Web portals, and 15 practices created disease registries.

According to evaluators, small practices needed help in selecting EHR systems, and some practices needed assistance implementing and integrating new EHRs into their practice routines. Nearly all practices found that implementing an EHR was more difficult and time-consuming than expected.

Practices also found that disease registries were helpful in managing preventive and chronic disease care and enabled practice staff to engage in team-based care. And although physicians were eager to implement disease registries, the prospect of double data entry -- a necessary second step when EHRs do not populate or support a stand-alone registry -- stifled interest.

A total of 36 medical practices were selected to participate in the national demonstration project; 31 practices were still onboard when it ended in June 2008. The project was designed to test how primary care practices could implement various components of the medical home model of care.