Patient Centered Approach

A "Patient Centered Approach" to medicine is also known as a Team Based Approach. I prefer the latter since the former implies that the patient has not always been the focus of many well intentioned caregives. A Team Based Approach utilizes caregivers from many different discliplines, physicians and non-physicians, in order to coordinate the approach to a given patient. Institutions like the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic have very good outcomes utilizing this approach, however many smaller institutions, including our own, have similar outcomes. What is different is the way in which patients perceive or experience their care. The Clinics, in their model, have hired all of the physician on the team, use the same information systems, and seem to have an easier time communicating between the caregivers and the patients. This is possible at institutions that do not employ their caregivers, but the myriad scheduling systems, billing systems, electronic health records and even simply locations create the need for an extra solution to get to the same place. At Anna Jaques, we are constantly looking for better ways to communicate with patients, physicians and family. We are going to implement soon the Physician/Nurse Rounding structure which I will describe in tomorrows blog.

It's Nice to Meet You!

My name is Jason Krupp. I am an internal medicine physician and the new Chief Medical Officer of Anna Jaques Hospital.

I asked to do this “blog” in order to try to communicate on a regular, if informal, basis, how I am working with everyone here at Anna Jaques to improve the hospital daily.

In this age of transparency, hospitals provide a great deal of information on things they are doing well and things that need improvement. However, there is so much that goes on behind the scenes every minute in a hospital, I thought this snapshot would be of interest.

I get asked an awful lot what a “Chief Medical Officer” does. I believe my job is to utilize my experience as a physician to assist Administration in ensuring that our hospital provides the safest and highest quality environment and processes that allows physicians, nurses and other practitioners to provide their best care to all of our patients and their families.

Maybe this is not an elegant description, but I think it is inclusive. I’m not sure if my kids comprehend it either. As an example of the breadth of my role, today I have met with a physician about numbers of shifts, I am going now to Chair our Compliance Committee, and I have been working on a program that will allow us to provide even more coordinated care with our community physicians.

I look forward to blogging with you, and appreciate your feedback.