Comment (debate): primary care organizations and health systems

Non-governmental organizations and primary health care.

Health Care Organizations as Complex Adaptive Systems

From its roots in physics, mathematics, and biology, the study of complexity science, or complex adaptive systems, has expanded into the domain of organizations and systems of organizations. Complexity science is useful for studying the evolution of complex organizations -entities with multiple, diverse, interconnected elements. Evolution of complex organizations often is accompanied by feedbac...

Primary Care Clinics and Accountable Care Organizations

BACKGROUND The Accountable Care Organization (ACO) is one of the new models of health care delivery in the U.S. To date, little is known about the characteristics of health care organizations that have joined ACOs. We report on the findings of a survey of primary care clinics, the objective of which was to investigate the opinions of clinic management about participation in ACOs, and the charac...

Accountable Care Organizations and Population Health Organizations.

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) and hospitals are investing in improving "population health," by which they nearly always mean the health of the "population" of patients "attributed" by Medicare, Medicaid, or private health insurers to their organizations. But population health can and should also mean "the health of the entire population in a geographic area." We present arguments for an...

Debate Setting priorities in health care organizations : criteria , processes , and parameters of success

Background: Hospitals and regional health authorities must set priorities in the face of resource constraints. Decision-makers seek practical ways to set priorities fairly in strategic planning, but find limited guidance from the literature. Very little has been reported from the perspective of Board members and senior managers about what criteria, processes and parameters of success they would...