With TEAM’s focus on improving surgical recoveries and costs in major hospital-based surgeries, it’s easy to miss the importance of primary care physicians. But their role is essential for meeting TEAM’s objective to improve patient recovery and lower costs in the five major types of surgery covered by TEAM. And perhaps not in the way…

Modern medicine is more advanced than ever, yet clinical care still leans heavily on what is, in practice, informed guesswork. Doctors make the most probable diagnosis, select the therapy most likely to help, and adjust only when outcomes fall short. To further complicate matters, one-half of patients with chronic diseases do not take their medications as…

The new Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM) targets the highest cost or volume surgeries in the Medicare program. While hospitals bear the financial risk, CMS has created a vehicle to align interests with other providers through Collaboration Agreements that can include financial incentives. How those are structured will be key to the successful alignment—or fracture—of the hospital’s…