Making a Business Case for Team-Based Care

MARIANNA KONG; THOMAS BODENHEIMER; RACHEL WILLARD-GRACE

Team-based care improves quality and efficiency while making practice more sustainable. Here's how to better advocate for getting the help you need.

MARIANNA KONG, MD, THOMAS BODENHEIMER, MD, AND RACHEL WILLARD-GRACE, MPH

Fam Pract Manag. 2023;30(4):31-37

This content conforms to AAFP criteria for CME.

Author disclosures: no relevant financial relationships.

The physicians at your group practice have been looking at models to help manage the exploding volume of non-visit work, including responding to in-basket messages, coordinating referrals, and managing prior authorizations. The physicians believe that bringing on a referral coordinator and a licensed vocational/practical nurse to manage these tasks would make their work more sustainable. You were nominated to share the idea with leadership and secure their support, but you have no idea where to start.

Team-based care has clear advantages for improving care quality, the patient experience, and the sustainability of practicing primary care. Family medicine physicians are often tasked with making a business case to their organization's senior leadership to justify additional personnel, a task that can feel daunting. Learning how to present the benefits of expanding team-based care in terms that resonate with leadership is essential for obtaining buy-in. This article presents five strategies to build a business case for investing in the care team.

KEY POINTS

Team-based care models have been shown to improve access/capacity, population health, patient experience, and costs while making the practice of primary care more sustainable for physicians.
Getting leadership to invest in the primary care team may require presenting a business case that speaks to the organization's priorities and considers various payment model incentives.
Increased productivity is a compelling argument; with an optimized team, physicians are freed from lower-level tasks and their productivity increases, which drives improvements across other key metrics.

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