Practice Management Alert

ATBC helps improve workflows and frees up providers’ time.

Nearly every medical practice uses some form of team-based care, meaning that an entire team of people help patients get the care they need. But one relatively new strategy that’s helping practices maintain peak efficiency is advanced team-based care, also called ATBC.

Check out a few important facts to discover how ATBC may help your practice thrive.

Check Out Advantages of Advanced Team-Based Care

ATBC may allow the provider to free up their time while other team members handle different aspects of the patient’s care. Advanced team-based care also provides advantages for patients, who get all of their questions answered in a more relaxed environment, where someone is always available to assist them.

ATBC is especially helpful when your patients have a lot of chronic conditions and need care that goes beyond occasional visits with the provider. Plus, with ATBC, staff members may enjoy their jobs more because they feel more valued and get to work on increasingly challenging responsibilities.

Know Who’s on the Team

Advanced team-based care can involve a wide range of team members who work together to help the patient get the best care possible. The team may include:

• Medical assistants,
• Care team coordinators,
• Physicians,
• Nurses,
• Nurse practitioners,
• Physician assistants,
• And many more.

Which specific members are on the ATBC team will depend on your practice’s individual needs. Some providers may find that they need different people as part of the advanced team-based care group. For example, an endocrinology practice may have a dietitian on the team to develop diabetes eating plans, while an oncology practice might have a clinical pharmacist as part of the advanced team-based care group to help answer questions about chemotherapy dosage and side effects.

In other cases, clinical social workers may help design a patient’s overall care model, particularly if the patient requires resources that span far beyond what your practice can provide. For instance, Veterans Affairs (VA) offices often have social workers on the team to help patients apply for supplemental insurance plans, navigate multiple specialists, work on home-based visit requests, and coordinate therapy appointments.

Redesign Workflows With ATBCs

Once you’ve assembled your advanced team-based care staff, you can begin to redesign your workflows to better meet the needs of patients. The workflow that works best for you will differ depending on your specialty, patient needs, and more. But according to the American Academy of Family Physicians, following are examples of how this may work:

• Hold a short team huddle every morning for five to 10 minutes, where your team members share information such as which staff members are working that day, whether any specific patient needs should be addressed before that day’s appointments start, challenges expected on that day, and if you’re awaiting any particular referrals or preauthorizations.
• Schedule brief panel management meetings on a regular schedule, such as weekly, to review certain patient groups so you can identify next steps and assign each step to a specific staff member to lead.
• Perform pre-visit planning sessions the day before a patient’s visit to identify care gaps so you’re well prepared with any needed screenings, immunizations, or referrals before patients arrive.
• Have mini-huddles after rooming a patient so the extended team members can alert the provider about what they learned during the rooming encounter. This allows the provider to be better prepared before walking into the room.
• Assign one team member to handle all data collection and recordkeeping for particular encounters so the provider can focus solely on the patient.

You may also find additional ways that using advanced team-based care can help your practice thrive.

Hiring Staff May Not Be Necessary

If you’re hoping to deploy an advanced team-based care strategy at your practice, you may not have to hire new team members to make it happen, according to the American College of Physicians. Instead, you can reshape the roles of your existing team members based on their interests and capabilities.

Your entire staff should be involved in the planning of how advanced team-based care will work at your practice, since some team members might want certain roles as part of the workflow redesign, whereas others may not.

You may also need to explain how ATBC works when you’re talking to patients, particularly if they’ll be expected to change their standard routines when they visit your office. Some practices hang photographs of different ATBC team members on the wall, along with a sign outlining their roles. This helps patients and their family members better understand who they may be seeing during their visit and why.

Torrey Kim, Contributing Writer, Raleigh, NC