Practices making strides to transform family medicine

Participating practices are 10 months into a two-year project to change family medicine to a new, patient-centered model of care.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Feb. 5, 2007.

Welcome to the virtual office of Bob Eidus, MD. It doesn't take a car to get here. Just the click of a few computer keys.

Patients visit the doctor via e-mail for $30. Typically, the encounter is a follow-up electronic session for something Dr. Eidus treated at his solo practice in Cranford, N.J.

"We're marketing them as online house calls," Dr. Eidus said. "In the long run, they will expand our capacity to treat patients. It gives tremendous convenience to patients."

The virtual effort is one way Cranford Family Practice is reshaping itself as part of a national demonstration project of TransforMED, an $8 million practice redesign initiative of the American Academy of Family Physicians. In April 2006, the AAFP announced that three dozen practices, including the Cranford practice, had been selected for the project.

Ten months later, the practices are integrating aspects of the initiative into reality. TransforMED is planning a second demonstration project for this summer.

"It's all going quite well. We feel as though we've been very successful," said Terry McGeeney, MD, president and CEO of TransforMED.

"Different practices are working on different things," he said.

TransforMED was the result of the Future of Family Medicine report, which national family medicine organizations released in 2004. The report called for transforming the specialty to a new model whose core elements include patient-centered care, electronic medical records, team approach to care, open access for patients, and a focus on quality and safety.