The article discusses how the Comprehensive Care Physicians (CCP) model proved to improve patient care and reduce utilization for patients at increased risk for hospitalization.

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The article discusses how the Comprehensive Care Physicians (CCP)
model proved to improve patient care and reduce utilization for patients
at increased risk for hospitalization.
How the CCP Model Could
Ensure Better Patient Care &
Reduced Costs
Medical Transcription Services
United States

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Medical transcription companies providing documentation support to physicians and
hospitals know that one of the things that contribute to increasing healthcare costs in
the United States is the frequent hospitalization of patients. Reducing the number of
hospitalizations could in turn reduce healthcare costs. To work towards this objective, in
2012, the University of Chicago Medicine funded by a Health Care Innovation Award
from the Centre for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation started enrolling patients in a
clinical trial to test an imaginative way to reduce hospital stays.
This study was featured in the May 2018 issue of the New York Times. The study was
designed to determine whether comprehensive care physicians (CCPs) who focus their
practices on the care of patients in and out of the hospital could improve care, while
simultaneously reducing the rate of hospitalization for a highly vulnerable set of patients
who were at considerable risk of being hospitalized.
In this model,
➢ The same physician provides care for the patients in both the clinic and the
hospital.
➢ Some CCPs make house calls as well, if required.
➢ The CCP also has a team of nurses, social workers, care coordinators and other
specialists who provide service for high risk patients.
➢ Each physician has a panel of around 200 patients at a time, and serves as their
primary care physician during clinic visits and supervises their care in hospitals
whenever they are hospitalized.
The model developed on the basis of a 15-year research by study director David Meltzer,
MD, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and chief of hospital
medicine and colleagues in the US, aimed to provide better patient care at minimal cost.
It succeeded in improving the continuity of care and strengthening the bond between
patient and provider.
The study involved 2,000 patients with chronic health issues, most of them coming from
the South Side of Chicago. Most of them had at least one hospital stay the previous
year, and all of them were covered by Medicare. Half of the patients were provided
standard care with hospital-based primary care physicians who consulted patients as
needed in the clinic but did not provide any direct care if they were admitted in the
hospital. The other half were given CCP model care.
The study revealed that the CCP model was better and more preferred by patients. The
hospitalization rates for CCP model patients were 15 to 22 percent lower than those who

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received standard patient care. The standard care physicians scored in the 80th
percentile
nationally, whereas CCP model doctors scored in the95th
percentile.
This model proved to be able to improve patient care and also reduce utilization for
patients at increased risk for hospitalization. The research team’s next step is an
expanded program “Comprehensive Care, Community and Culture Program (C4P)
designed to reduce the unfulfilled social needs of economically and socially
disadvantaged patients.
Innovative experiments such as the above discussed model are necessary from the point
of view of providing optimum patient care while also minimizing healthcare costs. Such
research studies involve a lot of documentation, patient and provider interviews,
discussions, and other recordings, which can all be transcribed and streamlined with the
support of a reliable medical transcription company.