5 ways to make team-based care a reality in your private practice

Preventing physician burnout is one of the many reasons that private practices and health systems are turning to team-based care. Empowering medical assistants and other team members can help put the patient back at the center of care. But how do you make that happen?

Team-based care can provide effective population health management, but it delivers another, equally positive effect: it can help fight physician burnout. This is often because some of the major drivers of physician burnout are centered around EHR demands.

Committed to making physician burnout a thing of the past, the AMA has studied, and is currently addressing issues causing and fueling physician burnout—including time constraints, technology and regulations—to better understand and reduce the challenges physicians face. By focusing on factors causing burnout at the system-level, the AMA assesses an organization’s well-being and offers guidance and targeted solutions to support physician well-being and satisfaction. 

At Bellin Health in Green Bay, Wisconsin, job satisfaction is at 92%, which can be attributed to the system’s team-based care model, implemented in 2014. Since then, AMA member James Jerzak, MD, has seen a significant reduction in burnout across all staff, as well as improvement in patient satisfaction and quality of care. And he wants to help other organizations do the same.

Being recognized nationally as a winning game plan, Dr. Jerzak and other organizations will share their success at the upcoming Team-Based Care Training Camp April 20–22, held by the AMA and Bellin Health in meeting spaces housed in Green Bay, Wisconsin’s famed Lambeau Field. Physicians and their teams can learn how to design, implement and sustain a team-based approach to achieving population health.

Early registration pricing for the Team-based Care Training Camp ends March 1. Regular pricing for the training camp begins March 2 and AMA members can receive a $200 discount on registration. To receive this discount, please enter coupon code “AMA2020.”

Here’s what we have learned about team-based care and its impact on an organization’s culture and physician well-being.

1. 1. The transition to team-based care delivers three wins: It is immensely satisfying to the care team, patients enthusiastically embrace it and there are significant benefits for the system.
2. 1. The default destination for most communication in the physician office is a doctor’s in-basket, housing overwhelming numbers of items and folders. As the workload grows, so does the volume of the in-basket, creating a burden that is difficult to effectively manage throughout the day. This leads to extra hours before and after clinic to complete between-visit clerical work, adding to physician burnout symptoms.
3. 1. In medical training, teaching clinics work as incubators that create gifted primary care physicians. But faculty physicians and residents often spend just one or two half days per week in teaching clinics, hampering the training experience and even the quality of care delivered to often underserved patient populations. To grow as primary care physicians, residents must make the most of their time in clinic.
4. 1. Only four years into practice, AMA member Kevin Hopkins, MD, was struggling with the clerical burdens of contemporary medicine. He was not a good typist, and he was not particularly good with using electronic devices. Every day was difficult. Meet the players on his team.
5. 1. If you have started implementing team-based care, you are seeing changes in your organization structure with new roles, titles and responsibilities. But with those changes, you might encounter some barriers to team-based care.

The AMA’s STEPS Forward™ open-access modules offer innovative strategies that allow physicians and their staff to thrive in the new health care environment. These courses can help you prevent physician burnout, create the organizational foundation for joy in medicine and improve practice efficiency.

The CME module, “Team-based Care,” is enduring material and designated by the AMA for a maximum of 0.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit. 

The module is part of the AMA Ed Hub, an online platform with top-quality CME and education that supports the professional development needs of physicians and other health professionals. With topics relevant to you, it also offers an easy, streamlined way to find, take, track and report educational activities.