Publication Date
7-29-2019
Keywords
home care, house calls, residency, frailty, health care costs, workforce, primary care
Abstract
Home-based primary care (HBPC) improves the lives of high-cost, frail, homebound patients and their caregivers while reducing costs by keeping patients at home and reducing the use of hospitals and nursing homes. Several forces are behind the resurgence of HBPC, including the rapidly aging population, advancements in portable medical technology, evidence showing the value of HBPC, and improved payments for HBPC. There are 2 million to 4 million patients who could benefit from HBPC, but only 12% are receiving it. The number of these patients is expected to double over the next two decades. This requires a larger and better prepared HBPC workforce, making St. Clair and colleagues’ article published within this same issue very timely. They showed residents exposed to HBPC had increased interests in providing HBPC in the future. They also found HBPC training fulfilled all 6 Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education core competencies and at least 16 of the 22 Family Medicine Milestone Project subcompetencies. Such medical education curricula are necessary to sufficiently develop a future workforce capable of appropriately providing HBPC to an increasing number of patients.
Recommended Citation
Cornwell T. House calls are reaching the tipping point — now we need the workforce. J Patient Cent Res Rev. 2019;6:188-91. doi: 10.17294/2330-0698.1719
Included in
Clinical and Medical Social Work Commons, Family Practice Nursing Commons, Geriatrics Commons, Health and Medical Administration Commons, Health Services Research Commons, Medical Education Commons, Medical Humanities Commons, Primary Care Commons
Submitted
July 10th, 2019
Accepted
July 29th, 2019
