Resource Center

All across the U.S., practices are trying to transform themselves to improve the quality of their care, become patient-centered medical homes, and qualify for new payment opportunities. The Primary Care Team Guide, developed by staff at the MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation, offers practical advice, close to 300 resources and models to help leaders and staff engaged in or considering practice transformation build more effective care teams and deploy them to optimize patient care.

Nationwide, primary care practices are finding that creating more effective practice teams is the key to becoming a patient-centered medical home, improving patients’ health and increasing productivity. The Primary Care Team Guide presents practical advice, case studies and tools from 31 practices across the country that have markedly improved care, efficiency and job satisfaction by transforming to a team-based approach.

These high-performing practices were selected and studied and the guide developed by a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called "The Primary Care Team: Learning from Effective Ambulatory Practices" — or "LEAP."

Practices committed to primary care transformation can use this guide to build care teams and redesign the work of patient care on the way to becoming a more effective and productive practice. Each module begins with a brief assessment, and includes a short overview of the recommended changes followed by specific action steps and helpful resources you can download, view, or access online anytime. The guide is broken down into three distinguishable segments:

• Get Started: Learn how to get the most from this guide and determine if your practice is ready to achieve team-based care
• Build the Team: Learn how expanding roles, increased training and using standing orders can develop trust, teamwork and efficiencies in your practice
• Do the Work: Learn how practices take on new functions that improve clinical quality, patient experience, and job satisfaction-while reducing costly hospital and Emergency Department visits