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Thursday, February 23, 2012

This doctor's 'complex' patients aren't who you think they are

The government, academics and policy wonks are always in the process of "redesigning" health care. Patients with increased health care needs are considered "complex" and these patients consume the major health resources (translate: "money").

In fact, 65% of total health care expenditures are directed toward the 25% of patients with multiple chronic conditions. Eighty percent of Medicare spending is on patients with four or more chronic diseases. For the first time a study has been done and published in Annals of Internal Medicine that actually asks primary care physicians (PCPs) what defines patient complexity. Who better than the treating doctor to answer this question?

The researchers asked 40 primary care physicians to rate the complexity of 120 of their own patients and to document the characteristics associated with complexity. Over one-fourth of patients were described by the doctors as "complex." The doctors were not told what defined "complexity," but instead were asked to describe it in their view. Once a patient was described as "complex," the doctor was given five domains to choose from, developed from previously published concepts. The five domains were:
--medical decision making (cognitive effort needed to make appropriate diagnoses and therapeutic decisions),
--coordination of care (overseeing care involving others and for making sure that the medical system is working for the patient),
--patient's personal characteristics (challenging patients),
--patient's mental health issues (includes substance abuse), and
--patient's socioeconomic circumstances (home and work issues, inability to afford medication).

Some characteristics of PCP-defined complex patients stood out. They were more likely to be over age 60 and women. They were more likely to have government insurance (Medicare/Medicaid) than commercial insurance. They were more likely to be undereducated and had many office visits. They took more than twice as many prescribed medications.

I find it fascinating that most of the PCP identified complex patients were not considered high risk by the Medicare model and other known models. The algorithms that guide payment and other policy decisions didn't hold up. The patients identified as complex by PCPs affect their workday and time, yet the known models would not have called them complex. More than co-morbidity and other case-mix definitions, factors like inadequate insurance, alcohol related problems, prescriptions for anxiety and other mental health issues were all associated with increased complexity per the physicians. These patients generated more visits, more high cost procedures and more need for mental health services.

The fact that doctors are finally being asked about their work is promising. It is predicted that 32 million uninsured Americans will come into the primary care system with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This, at a time when fewer medical school graduates are entering primary care and many PCPs are leaving clinical practice due to work related stress and decreased job satisfaction.

These results actually provide insight that should be considered in designing a health care system that works for patients and care-givers. It should influence payment mechanisms, office support and allow the extra time it takes to care for complex patients. These changes would go a long way to increasing the work satisfaction for PCPs. The fact that this was the first study that actually defined complexity from the PCP perspective is amazing. Let's hope it is the start of something that will ultimately improve the health care system for patients and PCPs.

This post originally appeared at Everything Health. Toni Brayer, FACP, is an ACP Internist editorial board member who blogs at EverythingHealth, designed to address the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st Century.

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posted by Toni Brayer, MD at 9:00 AM  

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Blog log

Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internist and ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:

Albert Fuchs, MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.

Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.

CasesBlog
Ves Dimov, MD, ACP Member, is an allergist/immunologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Chicago, where he evaluates and treats both pediatric and adult patients.

David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in integrative medicine and patient-centered care.

db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating medicine and the health care system.

DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about health topics for patients and health professionals.

Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for patients.

Everything Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.

FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship & Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.

Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care, illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital sanctums and the people who inhabit them.

Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD, heartburn, and chest pain.

I'm dok
ACP Member Mike Aref, MD, PhD, ACP Member, is an academic hospitalist with an interest in basic and clinical science and education, with interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code management, palliative care, patient-physician communication, quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.

Informatics Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to biomedical and health informatics.

Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication with Gregg Masters, MPH.

KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites for influential health commentary.

MD Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.

Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, ACP Member, shares her ideas on education, ethics in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast cancer.

More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a Distractible Kind).

Musing of an Internist
Justin Penn, MD, ACP Associate Member, attended medical school at the University of Washington School of Medicine and trained in internal medicine at the University of Rochester, where he is serving as Chief Resident.

Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and medical ethics, in no particular order.

Reflections of a Grady Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.

Technology in (Medical) Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in education, social media and networking, practice management and evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge management.

White Coat Underground
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the intersection of science, medicine, and culture.

Other blogs of note:

American Journal of Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and community-based practice.

Clinical Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP Member, associate program director at New York University Medical Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news, commentary and more.

Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news of the day.

PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a blog.

White Coat Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency room physician.

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