Design the Future Model of Health Care Delivery

Today's health care delivery model will be fundamentally transformed by change occurring relatively quickly over the next few years. We expect calls for affordable health care to intensify, and, as a result, health care payment systems increasingly will emphasize doing what is appropriate and necessary for each patient rather than doing more. There will be continued acute focus on the quality and value of health care services, so that all providers of health care will be required to demonstrate that the care they provide is safe, effective, timely, efficient, and equitable. The future model will need to be patient-centric with enhanced coordination of care among patients, providers, and payers. Also, it will need to integrate an ever-increasing body of scientific knowledge of both generalized best practice (evidence-based medicine) and individualized best practice (personalized medicine).

In essence, we anticipate a health care revolution. Our goal, therefore, is to be a forerunner in creating thefuture model of its delivery. We must start by leading in the design and implementation of evidence-based medicine and in the design and testing of both new systems of care and new approaches to health care financing. Building on our long-standing mission of primary care education, we must investigate ways to re-design and re-brand primary care medicine. We must become experts in implementing new approaches to care models and in teaching others how to implement them. Because patients will have a defined and empowered role in planning the development of the way and environment in which care is delivered in the future, interaction with and within our community, and incorporating preventive medicine, will be of paramount concern.