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At the Intersection of Health, Health Care and Policy

Cite this article as:


David O. Meltzer and Gregory W. Ruhnke
Redesigning Care For Patients At Increased Hospitalization Risk: The Comprehensive
Care Physician Model
Health Affairs, 33, no.5 (2014):770-777

doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0072

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Hospital Productivity

By David O. Meltzer and Gregory W. Ruhnke


doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0072

Redesigning Care For Patients At


HEALTH AFFAIRS 33,
NO. 5 (2014): 770–777
©2014 Project HOPE—
The People-to-People Health
Foundation, Inc.

Increased Hospitalization Risk:


The Comprehensive Care Physician
Model
David O. Meltzer (dmeltzer@
medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu) is ABSTRACT Patients who have been hospitalized often experience care
chief of the Section of
Hospital Medicine, University
coordination problems that worsen outcomes and increase costs. One
of Chicago, in Illinois. reason is that hospital care and ambulatory care are often provided by
Gregory W. Ruhnke is an
different physicians. However, interventions to improve care coordination
assistant professor in the for hospitalized patients have not consistently improved outcomes and
Section of Hospital Medicine,
University of Chicago.
generally have not reduced costs. We describe the rationale for the
Comprehensive Care Physician model, in which physicians focus their
practice on patients at increased risk of hospitalization so that they can
provide both inpatient and outpatient care to their patients. We also
describe the design and implementation of a study supported by the
Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to assess the model’s
effects on costs and outcomes. Evidence concerning the effectiveness of
the program is expected by 2016. If the program is found to be effective,
the next steps will be to assess the durability of its benefits and the
model’s potential for dissemination; evidence to the contrary will provide
insights into how to alter the program to address sources of failure.

D
elivery-system innovations are tional primary care model, in which primary care
critical to reducing health care physicians provided both hospital and ambula-
costs and improving outcomes. tory care for their patients, to the current model,
Because health care spending and in which primary care physicians limit their
poor health outcomes are concen- practice to ambulatory care and hospitalists—
trated among a relatively small fraction of the physicians who specialize in the care of hospital-
population,1 these innovations will improve out- ized patients—provide inpatient care. One rea-
comes and produce savings that exceed their cost son for this shift was the belief that hospitalists
only if they address the needs of these high-risk would have greater inpatient expertise and pres-
patients. Hospital costs are a key focus for such ence in the hospital than traditional primary care
efforts because they are a large fraction of total physicians and thus would improve outcomes
health care costs, especially for these high-cost and reduce costs for hospitalized patients.3
patients.2 Unfortunately, subsequent studies have found
Efforts to reduce hospital costs have a long that the use of hospitalists led to reductions in
history in the United States. They include the hospital costs and improvements in outcomes
implementation of Medicare’s inpatient pro- that were modest at best.4 The largest study to
spective payment system in 1983, which at- compare longer-term costs and outcomes of pa-
tempted to contain spending by establishing tients receiving inpatient care from hospitalists
fixed reimbursement levels for hospitalization to those of patients receiving inpatient and out-
based on diagnosis-related groups. Beginning patient care from the same doctor could not iden-
in the 1990s there was a rapid shift from a tradi- tify any differences between the two groups of

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patients.5 One reason for this may be the greater (ICU) services in their terminal hospitalization if
discontinuities in care when patients receive they are cared for by their primary care physician
hospital care from hospitalists instead of from in that hospitalization.14 Additionally, Medicare
traditional primary care physicians.6 patients have 15 percent lower costs when they
Recognition of the potential adverse effects have received primary care from the same doctor
of discontinuities between inpatient and out- for more than ten years.15 And in a remarkable
patient care led to the development of various study, John Wasson and coauthors found that
care coordination interventions such as the patients with complex conditions who were
Transitional Care Model7 and the Care Transi- cared for by Department of Veterans Affairs pro-
tions Model,8 which use care coordinators or viders had 38 percent fewer hospital days and
advanced-practice nurses to enhance continuity. 74 percent fewer ICU days when they were ran-
These interventions have been found to improve domly assigned to receive primary care from the
care in some instances and to reduce certain same physician in each ambulatory visit, as com-
costly forms of utilization, including hospital pared to seeing a different physician in each
readmission. Unfortunately, these interventions visit.16
often fail to recoup their costs, leaving the total Questions about the value of having hospital
costs of care generally unchanged.9 This suggests care provided by hospitalists compared to tradi-
that if effective strategies to improve care co- tional primary care physicians reflect these
ordination at a low cost could be identified, they trade-offs between the advantages and disadvan-
might have strong potential to reduce total costs tages of specialization, especially for patients at
and improve outcomes. increased risk of hospitalization.17 Hospitalists
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Inno- have greater focus on and experience in caring
vation (CMMI) was created under the Affordable for hospitalized patients. However, they may be
Care Act to support and evaluate delivery-system less likely to adequately appreciate a patient’s
innovations. This article describes the rationale medical history or changes in his or her condi-
for and structure of the Comprehensive Care Phy- tion or to address end-of-life issues when they
sician (CCP) model, which seeks to improve care lack a preexisting relationship with the patient.
at low cost for patients at increased risk of hos- These differences may be why the use of hospital-
pitalization by providing them with a physician ists has not consistently been found to produce
who will care for them in both the inpatient and savings or improve outcomes.
outpatient settings. The article also describes the Extensive efforts have been made to improve
design and implementation of a study supported handoffs between primary care physicians and
by CMMI to test the effects of the model on costs hospitalists. However, such efforts are costly,
and outcomes. difficult to disseminate, and unlikely to fully
eliminate these problems.18
The fact that the use of hospitalists has sub-
Ambulatory And Hospital Care stantial disadvantages as well as advantages and
The remarkable increases in medical specializa- the mixed evidence on hospitalists’ effects on
tion in the past century10 are at least partially an costs and outcomes raise questions as to why
understandable response to the rapid increases the use of hospitalists has increased so greatly.
in medical knowledge over the period. However, An important set of hypotheses focuses on the
the value of specialization11 is limited by the incentives faced by primary care physicians. One
costs of coordinating multiple providers and of the hypotheses is that the increasing severity
discontinuities in the doctor-patient relation- of illness among hospitalized patients has made
ship. Coordination costs include time spent primary care physicians less comfortable provid-
communicating, errors that occur when commu- ing inpatient care than in the past.19 However,
nication fails, and agency problems that arise the growing use of intensivists to staff ICUs since
when responsibility for outcomes is diffuse. Dis- the 1980s argues against this explanation for the
continuities in the doctor-patient relationship withdrawal of primary care physicians from hos-
can impair physicians’ knowledge of their pa- pital care.
tients and communication, trust, and interper- A related, but stronger, hypothesis to explain
sonal relationships between doctors and pa- the growing use of hospitalists is that primary
tients, all of which have been associated with a care physicians were willing to relinquish in-
range of outcomes.12 patient care of their patients to hospitalists be-
Indeed, observational and experimental stud- cause they no longer had enough patients in the
ies suggest that greater continuity in the hospital to justify their daily presence there. One
physician-patient relationship leads to improved major reason for the decline in the number of
outcomes.13 For example, patients with lung can- hospitalized patients is changes in ambulato-
cer are less likely to receive intensive care unit ry care.

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Hospital Productivity

Patients historically visited primary care


physicians primarily for acute illnesses. How- Our CCP model has as
ever, since the 1980s the number of visits to these
physicians for ambulatory care has increased its centerpiece a
rapidly, while rates of hospitalization have been
stable. These changes have resulted in an 80 per-
single physician
cent decline in hospital visits relative to ambula-
tory visits.20 As a result, the number of acutely ill
providing inpatient
patients that primary care physicians see in a
typical clinic day has declined, so that they have
and outpatient care
fewer patients in the hospital and less incentive for each patient.
to travel to the hospital to see their hospitalized
patients.
These changes have also made primary care
physicians’ daily inpatient census more variable
and decreased the time they can spend in the
hospital each day, making it harder for them by making it possible for a single physician to
to care for their hospitalized patients. Decreas- provide care in both the inpatient and outpatient
ing physician work hours, rising time costs of settings, which reduces the need for costly ef-
transport between clinics and hospitals, and im- forts to coordinate care and strengthens the doc-
proving technologies for communication be- tor-patient relationship and the physician’s
tween hospitalists and primary care physicians “ownership” of the patient’s care across settings.
also have made it economically attractive for the Following the adaptive organization approach,
latter to relinquish inpatient care of their pa- primary care physicians or other providers who
tients to hospitalists.21 Increasing use of inten- care for patients only in ambulatory settings can
sivists may also have decreased inpatient vol- devote themselves to providing primary care to
umes for primary care physicians. the broader population at low risk of hospitali-
These findings about the advantages and dis- zation.
advantages of having separate providers for am-
bulatory and hospital care suggest a dilemma.
Patients might benefit from receiving hospital The Comprehensive Care Physician
care from their primary care physician, with Model
whom they have a relationship, but it is increas- The idea of having the same physician care for
ingly difficult for primary care physicians to have patients in both clinic and hospital settings may
enough inpatient volume to be effective in that seem like a reversion to a historical model of care
role. that may no longer be practical for providers.
Recent “adaptive organization” theories of However, the key difference between the CCP
specialization suggest strategies that organiza- model and the traditional model is that the
tions could apply to adapt to the challenges they CCP model focuses on patients at high risk of
face in situations such as this, in which both the hospitalization. Limiting patient panels in this
benefits and the costs of specialization are way is intended to give CCPs enough hospitalized
high.22 For example, if it is not possible to effi- patients to have a meaningful daily physical pres-
ciently provide a service that addresses multiple ence in the hospital while still allowing them to
objectives, it may make sense to separate those provide ambulatory care for their patients.
objectives. In health care, this echoes a recom- Providing these physicians with a high volume
mendation by Clayton Christensen and co- of inpatients and locating their clinics in or near
authors in The Innovator’s Prescription: Clinical the hospital can allow them to offer many of the
pathways that standardize care can sometimes same benefits that hospitalists provide in terms
improve the effectiveness and efficiency of med- of inpatient experience and physical presence
ical practice, but some care is better provided in and to offer the additional benefit of continuity
“solution shops” that recognize the need for var- across settings and over time. Patients at low risk
iability in practice and the increased need for of hospitalization can receive ambulatory care
care coordination of patients with complex con- from providers who provide only ambulatory
ditions.23 care. In the unlikely event that they require hos-
Our CCP model follows this approach. It does pitalization, they can receive hospital care from a
not emphasize costly—and often imperfect— hospitalist.
efforts to coordinate the provision of inpatient The CCP model promises a range of advantages
and outpatient care by separate people. Instead, compared to the traditional model. Perhaps the
the model seeks to improve coordination of care most obvious is that high-risk patients can re-

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ceive hospital and clinic care from the same phy- proved quality for Medicare, Medicaid, and
sician, reducing the likelihood of lapses in care Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) en-
around a hospitalization and providing other rollees.”25 We submitted a proposal to implement
benefits of an established physician-patient rela- the CCP model at the University of Chicago Med-
tionship while avoiding the added costs of care ical Center with a focus on Medicare beneficia-
coordination interventions.1 ries. Our proposal was funded, and implementa-
The model may also have advantages for the tion began in July 2012.
physician, because it is easier and often more Our CCP model has as its centerpiece a single
psychologically rewarding for a doctor to care physician providing inpatient and outpatient
for a patient he or she already knows. Most pa- care for each patient. Other elements of the mod-
tients appropriate for care within the CCP model el are being developed based on our understand-
might have multiple conditions, so generalists ing of the needs of the population of patients we
would typically be the most suitable providers to are serving.
serve as CCPs for them. However, specialists Exhibit 1 summarizes our implementation
might be the ideal CCPs for patients whose rea- plan. One important early decision we made con-
sons for hospitalization mostly fall within the cerned how to identify an eligible patient popu-
domain of a single medical specialty.24 For lation that would allow our CCPs to have enough
payers, and for providers in reimbursement sys- patients in the hospital while still having a man-
tems with incentives to decrease utilization, the ageable and efficient panel size. Our goal was to
CCP model may also reduce hospitalizations and have a panel size that the physician could man-
other major components of spending. age with the support of an interdisciplinary team
constructed with the goal of meeting the needs of
each patient effectively and efficiently, instead of
Implementing The CCP Model the goal of increasing the number of patients
In 2011 CMMI awarded the first round of its that each physician could manage in his or her
Health Care Innovation Awards. These awards panel.
are designed to support “applicants who propose We assumed that patients would average about
compelling new models of service delivery/pay- five clinic visits annually with their CCP. We also
ment improvements that hold the promise of assumed that if a CCP saw an average of about
delivering the three-part aim of better health, five patients in the hospital per day (which would
better health care, and lower costs through im- amount to 2,000 patient-days per year), it would

Exhibit 1

Elements Of The Comprehensive Care Physician (CCP) Model Based On Lessons From The Literature
Lesson from the literature Model element
Focus on high-cost patients High-cost patients are those expected to spend about 10 days per year in the hospital; estimated Medicare
spending for each patient is about $100,000 per year. We identified high-risk patients as those with at least
one hospitalization in the past year.
Maximize direct interaction between Each CCP’s panel size is 200 patients. CCPs typically spend mornings on the wards and afternoons in the clinic,
the CCPs and their patients caring directly for their own patients in both settings. The 5 CCPs provide afternoon coverage in rotation.
Build an interdisciplinary team that Teams include an advanced-practice nurse, registered nurse, social worker, and clinic coordinator. Team
is low cost and effective composition is individualized for each patient’s needs. To promote continuity in patient-provider
relationships and minimize costs of coordination, emphasis is on having the smallest appropriate team for
each patient and cross-training team members, instead of “practicing at top of license.”
Support the care team Weekend coverage is shared by the 5 CCPs; evening and night coverage is provided by hospitalists. CCPs are
provided with training in key skills such as effective team care, culturally competent care, and palliative care;
psychosocial support for team members caring for seriously ill and sometimes difficult patients; and career
development opportunities for team members.
Focus on care transitions The CCP or another member of the care team makes postdischarge calls to the patient; health IT is used (for
example, a CCP is paged when one of his or her patients comes to the emergency department).
Use rapid-cycle innovation We held frequent, data-driven meetings, with participation from key decision makers.
Use rigorous evaluation We used randomized design, Medicare claims data, and internal and external evaluators.
Use financial incentives We proposed shared savings, but they were not available through this award mechanism; we developed risk-
adjusted estimates of predicted total costs from non-experimental data with comparisons to estimates
from randomized treatment and control groups to prepare for reimbursement through shared-savings
models.

SOURCE Authors’ analysis. NOTES IT is information technology. CMMI is Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation.

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Hospital Productivity

be economically viable for the CCP to spend sev-


eral hours in the hospital each morning.We then Despite the emphasis
calculated that we could achieve this average dai-
ly census with a manageable and efficient panel on the patient’s
size of 200 patients who would be expected to
average ten days in the hospital per year. physician, we also
To identify such a patient population, we con-
sidered a range of statistical models that use
emphasized the
administrative, clinical, or patient-reported data
to predict risk of hospitalization.26–29 A key find-
importance of the care
ing was that a past hospital admission is a strong
predictor of future admission. Based on data
team in developing
from our institution that patients admitted to our CCP program.
our hospital’s general medical services averaged
ten days in the hospital during the year following
their admission, and considering the advantages
of having simple study inclusion criteria for sub-
ject recruitment, we defined the eligible popula-
tion as Medicare patients who had been admitted time covering physician.
to the hospital at least once in the past year. We also enhance training for CCPs in areas
Despite the emphasis of the CCP model on the critical to the care of the participating patients,
patient’s physician, we also emphasized the im- such as addressing end-of-life issues and com-
portance of the care team in developing our CCP plex psychosocial needs. The cost of nighttime
program (Exhibit 1). For example, to allow for coverage and excess inpatient capacity as the
efficient daytime coverage and a sustainable program enrollment increases has been substan-
number of weekend days worked, we designed tially reduced by managing the program as part
the program to include five CCPs. Each CCP cov- of our larger hospitalist program.
ers the inpatient service during the afternoon CMMI engaged external contractors to formal-
and the weekend for one of every five weeks. ly evaluate the Health Care Innovation Awards.
Teamwork is also critical in the ambulatory In addition, CMMI provided funding to our in-
setting, where the five CCPs work with a clinic stitution so that we could assess the program’s
staff that currently consists of a clinic coordina- implementation and outcomes during the study
tor, social worker, registered nurse, and ad- period to allow for rapid-cycle improvement.
vanced-practice nurse. To improve the quality We expected that patients electing to join our
of teamwork and care coordination, we keep care study would be likely to have much greater utili-
teams small for each patient.We do this by select- zation than other patients with similar diagno-
ing the providers for each patient’s care team and ses. Thus, we felt that traditional risk-adjust-
defining their roles within the team to address ment techniques might perform poorly, and
each patient’s particular needs. we designed our program as a randomized con-
We also seek to reduce coordination costs by trolled trial with an expected enrollment of
helping providers understand that it is not al- 2,000 patients.We chose to randomly assign half
ways efficient for providers to practice at the “top of the patients to the CCP model intervention and
of their license.” Accordingly, we train providers half to a control group that continues to receive
to perform simple tasks that might sometimes be care from different doctors in the inpatient and
performed by other members of the team. We outpatient settings in our institution or the other
also evaluate and adapt evidence-based tools to medical practices they select.
improve care coordination30 and provide train- For our internal evaluation plan, we worked
ing in effective team functioning.31 with CMMI to develop a driver diagram (see Ap-
Because inpatient-outpatient transitions in pendix Exhibit A1)32 to describe how the pro-
our model do not require changes in providers gram’s key elements could be expected to pro-
as they do in the hospitalist model, our care duce the desired improvements in patient care,
coordination plans focus on other care transi- outcomes, and costs.33 For example, we hypoth-
tions. One example of a care transition is when esized that increased continuity of care across
a patient’s CCP signs out at the end of the morn- the inpatient and outpatient settings could
ing and is replaced by the CCP who is covering improve measures of the quality of the doctor-
the hospital in the afternoon. Another example is patient relationship (such as the doctor’s knowl-
when a participating patient comes to the emer- edge of the patient, trust, interpersonal relation-
gency department—an event that triggers an au- ship, and communication) and improve ratings
tomated page to the patient’s CCP or the night- of care (for example, those measured by the Pri-

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utilization could produce large reductions in
Evidence of efficacy is health care costs. In that case, the CCP model
might be particularly attractive to payers or pro-
important to the CCP viders working under capitated payment, which
produces incentives to reduce costs. For such
model’s potential incentives to be effective, risk adjustment would
dissemination, but the need to adequately reflect these patients’ high
levels of spending.
model must also be Unfortunately, it is not clear that current risk-
adjustment methods can be effective in estimat-
profitable for ing costs for patients expected to have high levels
of utilization.36,37 Our dissemination plan in-
providers and payers. cludes analyses both to assess and develop
risk-adjustment models that could be used for
the CCP model under prospective payment and
to assess whether the population of eligible pa-
tients might be similar at other institutions.

mary Care Assessment Survey34 or the Consumer


Assessment of Health Providers and Systems35). Conclusion
The key health outcome measures of our study Successful health reform requires innovative
are self-rated health status, limitations in activi- care models that can improve outcomes and low-
ties of daily living and in instrumental activities er costs. Patient-centered medical homes empha-
of daily living, and mortality. The key cost mea- size the role of the physician as the director of a
sure is total cost of care to Medicare. Because of team approach to care.38 However, the failure of
the need to measure resource use and total costs many care coordination models to reduce total
through claims data, our study excludes Medi- costs of care provides a cautionary tale. In this
care patients who are enrolled in Medicare Ad- context, the potential of the CCP model to im-
vantage plans. prove coordination of inpatient and outpatient
In our program we are using all of the data care of high-cost patients at lower cost deserves
available to us for rapid-cycle improvement at careful study.
multiple levels, which include evaluating our Although the CCP model has unique elements,
progress toward program outcomes and identi- it shares overall objectives and some program-
fying opportunities to benefit individual patients matic elements with several widely proposed
in the program (such as when evidence suggest- models of care, including the Chronic Care Mod-
ing undiagnosed depression is found in a patient el.39 It also resonates with the more specialized
interview performed through our evaluation). roles that general internists assume in the Unit-
For example, we discovered that many patients ed Kingdom and, especially, New Zealand, where
who were otherwise eligible for the program general internists mostly serve as consultants
could not reliably travel to the clinic for ambula- but sometimes care indefinitely for selected pa-
tory care, so we focused the ambulatory practice tients with complex conditions.40,41 The experi-
of one of our CCPs on providing home-based ences of these countries with such models of care
care. Similarly, we found that patients recruited and of US physicians who still see their own
in the context of acute illness (such as shortly patients in both the clinic and the hospital are
after a hospital admission) had much greater worth further examination.
short-term need for hospital and clinic care than Evidence concerning the effectiveness of our
other patients did, which limited our ability to CCP program is expected by 2016. If the program
increase CCP panel sizes rapidly. Accordingly, is found to have had the desired effects on care,
we started new CCP panels well before reaching outcomes, or costs, we hope there will be interest
the size of 200 patients per CCP that we eventu- in assessing the durability of these benefits and
ally expect to reach. Additional lessons are sum- the model’s potential for dissemination. If the
marized in Appendix Exhibit A2.32 program does not accomplish its desired objec-
We are also using our driver diagram32 to ad- tives, we hope its evaluation will provide insights
dress issues that could affect the eventual dis- into how to alter it to address the sources of its
semination of our program. The costs of our failure.
CMMI program have been covered by the co- The continuous improvement process built in-
operative agreement and Medicare fee-for- to the program’s design is already providing in-
service payments. However, improved care for sights into how to improve future iterations of
these patients with high levels of health care the program, such as including a home care prac-

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Hospital Productivity

tice. Because multiple aspects of the program challenging if the patient population is not well
and the context in which it is applied (including defined, since its focus on high-cost patients
the practices selected by the control group) could could create adverse-selection problems for
influence its effectiveness, no set of findings— providers or payers if risk-adjustment models
positive or negative—will be definitive. For the underestimated costs for high-use patients. This
same reason, it may be particularly important to is a problem within capitated payment models
test core hypotheses that motivate the model, for many programs that target high-risk pa-
such as that outcomes improve as the physi- tients.
cian-patient relationship lengthens and im- Better risk adjustment may help address such
proves. concerns, but other approaches should also be
Evidence of efficacy is important to the CCP considered. These include blended payment
model’s potential dissemination, but the model models that combine fee-for-service reimburse-
must also be profitable for providers and payers. ment and care coordination fees, and shared sav-
The model’s relatively low costs and potential for ings based on salient measures of use. Future
savings would seem to make it attractive for cap- research should examine how the effectiveness
itated payment models used for defined popula- of the CCP model is affected by the financial
tions. Implementing the model becomes more incentives under which it operates. ▪

Some of these findings were previously (Grant No. 63910), a Midcareer Career in all three cases. The contents of this
presented at the National Bureau of Development Award from the National publication are solely the responsibility
Economic Research Hospital Institute on Aging (Grant No. 1 K24 of the authors and do not necessarily
Organization and Productivity AG031326-01), and the Center for represent the official views of the
Conference, Harwich, Massachusetts, Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Department of Health and Human
October 4–5, 2013. Financial support through a Health Care Innovation Award Services or any of its agencies.
for this work was provided by Robert (Grant No. 1C1CMS331033-01-00).
Wood Johnson Investigator Program David Meltzer was principal investigator

NOTES
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May [cited 2014 Mar 26]. Available care coordination, and value-based A randomized trial. JAMA. 1984;
from: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/ payment [Internet]. Washington 252(17):2413–7.
default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/63xx/ (DC): CBO; 2012 Jan [cited 2014 17 Meltzer D. Hospitalists and the
doc6332/05-03-medispending.pdf Mar 26]. (Issue Brief). Available doctor-patient relationship. J Legal
2 Joynt KE, Gawande AA, Orav E, Jha from: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/ Stud. 2001;30(2):589–606.
AK. Contribution of preventable default/files/cbofiles/attachments/ 18 Auerbach A, Fang M, Glasheen J,
acute care spending to total spend- 01-18-12-MedicareDemoBrief.pdf Brotman D, O’Leary K, Horwitz L.
ing for high-cost Medicare patients. 10 Starr P. The social transformation of BOOST: evidence needing a lift. J
JAMA. 2013;309(24):2572–8. American medicine. New York (NY): Hosp Med. 2013;8(8):468–9.
3 Wachter RM, Goldman L. The Basic Books; 1982. 19 Hamel MB, Drazen JM, Epstein AM.
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American health care system. N Engl sion of labor, coordination costs, changing face of primary care. N
J Med. 1996;335(7):514–7. and knowledge. Q J Econ. 1992; Engl J Med. 2009;360(11):1141–3.
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JAMA. 2002;287(4):487–94. JE, Rogers WH, Safran DG. The physician workforce and the emer-
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