How primary care offices reorganized care processes during the pandemic to maintain quality

What is it about?

We report on interviews with leaders of high performing primary care offices to learn about how they adapted office system processes and staff roles and responsibilities to sustain and improve the quality of their patients’ diabetes clinical outcomes. Leaders interviewed before and during the pandemic described proactive patient care processes -- interactions based on monitoring patient records that clinic staff initiate to inform and encourage patients to get care they often do not know they need. They told us that reorganizing proactive patient care processes most contribute to their practices’ superior performance on shared clinical patient outcomes.

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Photo by Erik van Dijk on Unsplash

Photo by Erik van Dijk on Unsplash

Why is it important?

While we might think systems and processes are like machines and therefore impossible to change, practice leaders described the changes they made within their primary care office systems. They talked about reorganizing the way staff interact with each other and with patients in responding to pandemic pressures and to concerns about patient safety. They acknowledged they were not initially prepared but learned quickly to conduct virtual patient visits. Practice leaders also told us about how helpful their larger health system was in providing both resources and helpful guidance. Our study contributes insights about how primary care can continue to transform and improve.

Perspectives