Family Doctor 2007 - (Page 19) working with your doctor MEDICAL HOME You can receive better health care at a medical home. When you or your loved ones are sick, you don’t want to go shopping for doctors, and you probably don’t want a first-date experience every time you need a physician. Most likely, you want to go home. By Leslie Champlin Why you need a ‘medical home’ W hen you visit your family physician, you’re coming to your “medical home.” You know your doctor. Your doctor knows you. And he or she can provide the kind plan for one condition won’t interfere with medicine or a treatment for a coexisting condition. Equally important, your medical home’s doctor can provide important details about your needs — which you might not remember or know are important — to other health care providers on your treatment team. “The parts are not the same as the whole,” says Kurt Stange, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Family Medicine Research Division at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and author of several articles on coordinating comprehensive care. “Specialty care does a good job with the care of specific diseases and organs. However, optimal care of each individual disease or organ doesn’t necessarily equate to optimal care of the whole person. Integration of care is what is needed.” And that’s what a medical home is all about. Leslie Champlin is an associate editor with the American Academy of Family Physicians, headquartered in Leawood, Kan. of care you need. Your medical home tracks your health history, provides immunizations to keep you well and appropriate treatments when you’re sick, and helps smooth the path if you face a life-changing chronic condition. Too often, people without medical homes go to an urgent care center for strep throat, an emergency room for a knee injury and a subspecialist for chronic ear infections. They have no single source for their children’s immunizations, a complete list of their medications or a history of annual checkup results. But a medical home is vital for good health care, says the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the nonprofit organization that serves as the nation’s adviser to improve health. The IOM’s 2001 report, Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, says health care is too uncoordinated; it requires patients to jump through too many hoops and take responsibility for communicating complicated medical information from one doctor to the next. That means patients without medical homes have more risk for missed diagnoses, misdiagnoses, unnecessary tests and medical errors because no one doctor has an entire picture of their needs. When you have a medical home, your doctor knows your complete health status and ensures that medicine or a treatment ADDITIONAL INFORMATION American Academy of Family Physicians http://familydoctor.org/x6686.xml American Academy of Family Physicians http://familydoctor.org/findadoc Health Pages http://www.thehealthpages.com National Institute on Aging http://www.niapublications.org/pubs/talking/index.asp familydoctor 2007 19 http://familydoctor.org/x6686.xml http://familydoctor.org/findadoc/ http://www.thehealthpages.com http://www.niapublications.org/pubs/talking/index.asp
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