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Improving Primary Care Practice

Primary care is the cornerstone of health care that is effective and efficient and meets the needs of patients, families, and communities. Our primary care system currently has significant—and perhaps unprecedented—opportunities to emphasize quality improvement (QI) and practice redesign in ways that could fundamentally improve health care in the United States. To ensure these efforts are successful, there is a need to build and sustain the ability of primary care practices to engage in QI activities in a continuous and effective way.

Behavior and Mental Health

Many studies have demonstrated that high-quality mental and behavioral health care may often be delivered in primary care settings. Because mental health, behavioral health, and substance use disorders are among the most common conditions seen in primary care settings and frequently occur with other medical problems, primary care providers are often in the best position to identify, diagnose, and treat them. A primary care practice will not reach its full potential without adequately addressing patients' mental health needs.

    Capacity Building

    These AHRQ publications describe the need for external infrastructure to help primary care practices develop quality improvement (QI) capacity and describe approaches and supports that could develop and support QI capacity in primary care.

      Clinical-Community Linkages

      Clinical-community linkages help to connect health care providers, community organizations, and public health agencies so they can improve patients' access to preventive and chronic care services.

        Health Care/System Redesign

        Health care/system redesign involves making systematic changes to primary care practices and health systems to improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of patient care.

          Health IT Integration

          The integration of health information technology (IT) into primary care includes a variety of electronic methods that are used to manage information about people's health and health care, for both individual patients and groups of patients. The use of health IT can improve the quality of care, even as it makes health care more cost effective.

            Healthier Pregnancy Provider Training

            Healthier Pregnancy: Tools and Techniques to Best Provide Affordable Care Act Covered Preventive Services addresses successful practices in implementing U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations around obesity, alcohol, depression, intimate partner violence, tobacco, and breastfeeding in pre- and perinatal care settings. The purpose of this initiative is to catalyze change among providers and organizations to operationalize the USPSTF recommendations as articulated in the Affordable Care Act, by increasing screening and referral for the following six preventive services in pre- and perinatal care settings and to increase understanding and implementation of trauma-informed care.

            Practical Tools for Primary Care Practice

            AHRQ partners with practicing clinicians to develop practical tools that can help primary care providers and other ambulatory clinicians and allied professionals to implement practice improvements and evidence-based approaches. These materials include toolkits with practical “how-to” information and tools on practice improvement as well as easily searchable libraries of guidelines and patient education materials.

            Public Reports on Provider Performance for Consumers

            Public reports refer to any effort to compare providers within a specified geographic region—for which all providers are eligible to be included—on a routine basis according to certain standards of quality performance. Also called consumer reports, performance reports, provider profiles, quality assessment reports, score cards, citizen report cards, and league tables, public reports represent one of a number of approaches that might have a place in a country or community's overarching quality strategy.

            Self-Management Support

            Self-management support is an important part of patient-centered care and care coordination in primary care settings. AHRQ’s Prevention and Chronic Care program has developed a variety of resources to help primary clinicians and teams learn about and implement self-management support.

            Tools for Implementing the PCMH

            Find tools and resources that relate to implementing the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) in primary care.

            Tools and Resources for Clinical Practice

            These tools and resources were developed with the primary care clinicians and teams in mind and can help facilitate delivery of high-quality care.

            Tools and Resources for Practice Transformation and Quality Improvement

            Developed and tested on the front lines of practice transformation and quality improvement, these AHRQ tools can facilitate improvement from solo and small practices to large group practices and integrated networks.

            Tools and Resources For Research and Evaluation

            These tools and resources are useful for researchers, evaluators, and others who are interested in designing and evaluating research in the primary care setting.

            Page last reviewed March 2023
            Page originally created February 2013

            Internet Citation: Improving Primary Care Practice. Content last reviewed March 2023. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD.
            https://archive.ahrq.gov/ncepcr/tools/improve/index.html

             

            The information on this page is archived and provided for reference purposes only.

             

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