Advanced Practice Clinicians Seen as Important Solution for Looming Shortage of Primary Care Physicians According to New BDC Advisors Article in hfm Magazine

BDC Director David Fairchild, MD, Erik Dukes, MD, and Lee Greer, MD, and Ewa Kisilewicz, MBA describe how they successfully integrated APCs into a Clinically Integrated Network (CIN) in rural Northeast Mississippi

Mississippi program seen as potential model for other medically underserved rural markets

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BDC Advisors

Jun 06, 2017, 08:40 ET

MIAMI, June 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The integration of Advanced Practice Clinicians (APCs)—primarily nurse practitioners and physician assistants—into clinically integrated provider networks offers an important tool in meeting the nation's growing primary care shortage, and provides provider health systems the resources needed to make the transition to value based care. In the article "APCs: an Important Primary Care Resource For Value-based Care" published this month in hfm Magazine of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, BDC Director David Fairchild, MD, writing with Erik Dukes, MD and Lee Greer, MD of the North Mississippi Health System (NMHS), and Ewa Kisilewicz, MBA of BDC, describe how NMHS successfully used Advanced Practice Clinicians to solve a critical primary care physician shortage in Northeast Mississippi, and built a successful CIN to provide value-based care to a widely dispersed rural population.

The authors document how the use of APCs has grown exponentially in recent years in both health systems and physician groups, and now how they can be incorporated into clinically integrated networks (CINs), which provide the core of value-based care in population health efforts. The authors describe how NMHS incorporated APCs, practicing at the top of their license, in a team setting with primary care physicians and specialists to build an effective provider network for commercial and government contracting in rural Mississippi. While some physicians have questioned the ability of APCs to deliver the same high quality care as primary care physicians, the authors cite their experience and several recent studies that document how the inclusion of APCs in team-based care improves care quality. Citing evidence from recent studies on the growing primary care physician shortage, the authors conclude that APCs will become essential to any value-based healthcare effort in any urban or rural market that is medically underserved.

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BDC ADVISORS, LLC. is a national healthcare strategy consulting with the mission of helping provider organizations grow and transform their organizations to meet the challenges of value based care. Established in 1990, BDC service lines include health enterprise strategy, payer/provider innovation, provider network development, organization design and development, population health, and strategies pricing and cost repositioning.

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SOURCE BDC Advisors