PATIENT-CENTERED PRIMARY CARE. GETTING FROM GOOD TO GREAT

Getting to Patient-Centered Care
From a Squad to a Team: Creating Team-Based Care
Behavioral Health and Care Enhancement: Building a Team to Do the Whole Job
Getting from “Delivering Care to Patients” to “Partnership with Patients”
When the Doctor-Patient Divide is a Chasm
Bridging the Chasm: The Current State of the Art
“T” is for Transparent
“E” is for Empowering
“A” is for Activating
“M” is for Mutual
Growing and Retaining an Expert Team
Quality Improvement, Data, and Partnership
Articulating the Model

There have been great strides made in designing the administrative structures of patient-centered care, but it is still difficult to design truly patient-centered clinical routines that the entire healthcare team can enact. The kind of partnership, in which patients are fully part of the team that guides their own care, goes against so much of the training and socialization of health professionals and, for that matter, the expectations of many patients. This is particularly true for patients we sometimes call “complex.” In other contexts, we call them “high utilizers,” “disadvantaged,” “heartsink patients,” or “people with trauma histories.” Blount calls them “multiply-disadvantaged” patients. To successfully serve these patients requires our best versions of team-based care, including behavioral health and care management team members, though every member of the team needs help in engaging these patients and mutual support in adapting to the rapid changes in roles that new team approaches are creating. This book offers a summary of the approaches that are currently in growing use, such as health literacy assessment, motivational interviewing, appreciative inquiry, shared decision making, minimally disruptive care, trauma informed care, enfranchisement coaching, relationship-centered care, and family-informed care. Finally, it offers a transformative method, based on familiar elements, that is Transparent, Empowering, Activating, and Mutual: the T.E.A.M. Way.

Features
• Helps primary care practices involve and activate patients in their own healthcare, especially patients who have previously been difficult to engage in taking care of themselves
• The different routines discussed each has a strong evidence base, this the first time they have been assembled into a comprehensive approach for clinicians and staff
• Offers a specific yet flexible implementation pathway that can be adjusted to fit any particular provider or practices

Authors
Alexander Blount is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Antioch University New England and Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is one of the original thought leaders of integrated behavioral health and has published widely on improving the structure of primary care. At Antioch, he developed the Major Area of Study in Behavioral Health Integration and Population Health. He has been a leader in developing the behavioral health workforce for integrated primary care, including both clinicians and other team members, in New Hampshire.
Dr. Blount comes from a position as Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School where he founded and directed the Center for Integrated Primary Care. Dr. Blount has been practicing, as a clinician, trainer, administrator, author, teacher and consultant for over 40 years. He has been a behavioral health clinician in primary care for almost 20 of those years. He is a member of the National Integration Academy Council guiding the Integration Academy of the Agency for Health Research and Quality. His books include Integrated Primary Care: The Future of Medical and Mental Health Collaboration, published by W. W. Norton. He is Past President of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association, a national multidisciplinary organization promoting the inclusion of mental health services in medical settings, and he is past Editor of Families, Systems and Health, the Journal of Collaborative Family Healthcare.