Welcome to the OAFP

The mission of the OAFP is to advocate for family physicians and assist them in providing for the health of their patients and communities.

Something fun! A wine tasting to benefit the OAFP Foundation's locum tenens fund, August 27th in Portland. Click here for details and a registration form.

NATIONAL HEALTH REFORM- WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU AND YOUR PATIENTS?
* The AAFP has created a simple one page explanation of what the new legislation does and doesn't do. For much more detail, visit this AAFP website.

The OAFP will be continuing our efforts to inform the public about the need for health reform and the next steps we need to take.

* We have created a website devoted to health reform information, www.FixHealthCareToday.org

* We are using local family physicians to give a powerpoint presentation titled "Saving Lives, Saving Money" to Rotary Clubs and retirement communities around the state (please e-mail kg@oafp.org if you would like more information about this project)

The State of Oregon Patient Centered Primary Care Standards Advisory Committee has published their Standards and Measures for Patient Centered Primary Care Home. Several OAFP members served on this Committee and their input is reflected in the document. This is an important set of standards and measures which we would like to urge all medical home pilot projects to use. Please take a few minutes to review this report and let us know if you have any suggestions or comments (kg@oafp.org). Thank you!

POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment). New rules you need to know.
Gary Plant, MD has offered to share the protocols written for Mountainview Hospital and Madras Medical Group.

What you need to know about Patient Centered Medical Home.

Click here for an excellent summary of many of the PCMH pilot programs around the US. The results of these programs show that PCMH works very well in both small practices and large integrated systems. Overall, the results show that with better access and care coordination using HIT, there is consistently a 25 to 30% reduction in hospitalization, 50% decrease in rehospitalization and a 10 to 30% reduction ER use. Many of the pilots show that just the reduced hospitalization alone more than covered the cost of delivering PCMH level care.
For small and medium size practices, the 32 practices in the TransforMED National Demonstration are seeing an average 14% increase in revenue, even without new money, plus much more satisfaction among patients, doctors and staff.

The Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program (CPGP) was created to educate health care professionals about pharmaceutical industry marketing practices and to provide tools for accessing unbiased sources of information about prescription drugs.