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University Hospitals’ accountable care organization had a math problem: More than 64,000 diabetic patients and only a few endocrinologists.
Besides the lack of available endocrinologists, there is a warped perception of who should care for the estimated 129 million Americans with at least one chronic disease, according to Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD.
“Across America, the thought is specialists deliver 90% of care for people with chronic disease, and our measure of success is how long of a wait time that specialist has,” said Dr. Pronovost, chief quality and clinical transformation officer at Cleveland-based University Hospitals.
“If it’s over three months or six months, they must be really, really good, because there’s demand,” he said, laughing. “But the mental model is still this archaic model that, ‘I only care for the people in front of me or who show up in my clinic rather than caring for a population.’ At our health system, we flipped that.”