I have criticized the AAFP many times in previous posts. As a member-driven organization, I guess I’ve essentially criticized U.S. family physicians in general, though I also think there is an inner circle in the AAFP ranks that have an inordinate influence on policies. From gatekeepers in the HMO era, to...
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In the AAFP’s Advanced Primary Care Alternative Payment Model document, the concept of population health management is a little more muddled, but it keeps rearing its head in different places in the document with different descriptors. From the definition of the primary care medical home, the phrase Planned Care and Population...
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First, I’ll quote the statement in the AAFP’s Alternative Payment Model document that deals with care coordination: “rimary care is best positioned to coordinate care across settings and among physicians in most cases. Primary care medical homes work closely with patients’ other health care providers to coordinate and manage care transitions,...
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The AAFP’s recent statement on Advanced Primary Care calls for adopting the “five key functions of the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus Initiative.” This was an experiment under Obamacare where CMS tried to create innovative primary care payment approaches, which was mostly patterned after NCQA PCMH thinking. It started in 2012. Mathematica Policy...
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Over my career, the American Academy of Family Physicians, my primary professional society, has made some colossal mistakes in what it has chosen to advocate for. It has learned from its past mistakes, but only a little. They’re about to screw it up again with their call for payment reform, but...
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This post is the 3rd in a series discussing our findings in a recently published study on the ways family physicians deliver better care at a lower cost than a multi-ologist model. Family physicians told us they are more comfortable with uncertainty than the ologists. For a little history, the Future...
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I must say, I’m very proud of the American Academy of Family Physicians for continuing to make statements about over-testing under the Choosing Wisely campaign umbrella. The Academy is more known for making wussy statements and taking wussy actions — the RUC wimp out being the prime example. So I salute...
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I was going to write a post about the spineless leadership of the AAFP and how they caved in to the RUC (relative value update committee — the ologist-dominated committee of the AMA that makes physician fee recommendations to CMS). Visualize the AAFP dog whimpering pathetically with its tail stuck firmly...
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