What makes patients complex? Ask their primary care physicians
Monday, December 19, 2011 - 17:20
in Health & Medicine
As Americans live longer with multiple medical conditions, managing their care is becoming increasingly challenging. Being able to define and measure patient complexity has important implications for how care is organized, how physicians and health care systems are paid, and how resources are allocated. In an article in the Dec. 20 Annals of Internal Medicine, a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report finding that primary care physicians define patient complexity using a broader range of factors including mental health, social factors and financial issues than do commonly used approaches based only on diagnoses and prior costs.