Clinical and Population Care

The Department is a part of the Primary Care Integrated Practice (PCIP), where we deliver our family medicine clinical care. The PCIP is part of the HealthTeam, which is Michigan State University’s entirely owned practice plan. During the year, PCIP faculty and staff worked diligently to enhance the operations of our clinical practice, including: addressing inefficiencies, enhancing the patient experience, delivering high quality and cost effective care, and improving working conditions for providers and staff. Based on our annual quality work competency survey, we identified specific areas for evidenced-based improvements. We also continue to hire new academic faculty with a strong commitment to clinical service, instruction, and research.

The national debate on healthcare needs to shift from merely focusing on cost to addressing access, affordability, and quality. Even though the US healthcare system is the most expensive in the world, based on metrics, we deliver a product that is far from the best in the world. However, together with our healthcare partners, The Department is involved in several projects that aim to address why this is, and more importantly, what can be done to make sure we receive the best value for the resources we allocate to healthcare. Changing perspective from the health of the individual to the health and wellbeing of populations is a necessity. Furthermore, we need to develop better systems to truly compensate healthcare actors based on the value of they offer, rather than merely focusing on actions.

In summary, the healthcare systems continue to pose a number of challenges. These challenges can only be addressed by innovative collaboration across traditional boundaries. Academic family medicine plays a key role in this process and I am convinces that 2018 will offer a numbers of examples of how our department is a part of that solution.