INNOVATORS: Doctors Making Practice Perfect

Just because we’re big on comprehensive reform, doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a smaller fix, and my story in today’s Washington Post tells how two individual doctors are trying to improve their little corner of the medical world.

Dr. Ramona Seidel of Bay Crossing Family Medicine in Annapolis has created a “micropractice”—a low-overhead, high-tech, hands-on primary care office where she manages chronic diseases and truly knows (and quite obviously likes) her patients. Not the only model for future high quality care, but one that works well for Dr. Seidel and her patients. Micropractitioners have their own "ideal practice" wiki you can check out. Seidel was also part of a national demonstration project known as TransforMED, which has worked with the American Academy of Family Physicians on new models of care.

The other physician I wrote about, Dr. Anna Maria Izquierdo-Porrera, has been doing quality-improvement work in overburdened clinics that treat mostly Latinos, many of whom have little or no insurance. One of her guiding principals is if rich people wouldn’t be caught dead in a poorly-run clinic, poor people shouldn’t have to tolerate it either. She's now trying to take some of her quality-improvement experience to other underserved populations, and I'll check back with her in the coming months.