What You Need to Know About Team-Based Care
At Advanced Internal Medicine in Paducah, KY, we believe that a team-based approach to health care is best for patients and providers. Our team of medical professionals works together to provide you with the best care possible. Led by Dr. Frazine, our team is composed of well-trained and highly experienced physician assistants (PAs),medical assistants, and office staff.
The Importance of PAs and Medical Assistants
In the complex world of modern medicine, a physician cannot do everything on their own. The inclusion of PAs and Medical Assistants in our practice allows us to provide care to more patients and ensure that we will be available with open appointments when you need us. The PAs discuss your care with Dr. Frazine before, during, and after your appointment as needed. This allows Dr. Frazine to be involved in the major treatment and diagnostic decisions for more patients every day.
In addition to our PAs, our medical assistants are on the front lines of fielding your questions, concerns, and requests. They gather information and data for our providers to improve the efficiency and timeliness of responding to your needs. They are also the ones to oversee referrals, insurance approvals, and medicine prior-authorizations.
Our PAs also take the lead on Chronic Care Management. This is a service offered to Medicare patients with complex chronic medical issues. Our PAs contact these patients regularly to review the status of their medical problems, such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, and others. They also take extra time to review communication from other providers that these patients see and help coordinate care between our office and other specialists.
Team-Based Care after Hospitalization
Another area where team-based care is evident is after hospitalization. After you are discharged from the hospital, you may be contacted by one of our medical assistants who will review your discharge instructions as well as your medication list and make sure it is accurate with what we have at our office.
Our medical assistants will also confirm that you were able to get any new prescriptions from your hospital stay and make sure you have a hospital follow-up appointment scheduled. The physician and PAs will be notified of any unresolved issues or special follow-up needs during your visit.
Having the flexibility of the PA’s schedules allows us to get most of our patients in within one week of leaving the hospital. This Transitional Care Visit has been shown to reduce the chances of readmission to the hospital significantly.
Our Goal is to Provide the Best Care Possible
Overall, team-based care is our effort to provide the best service possible when you need it. We want to be sure that you can always get into our office for an appointment to avoid urgent care and emergency room visits where they don’t know you and your history. We also want to be sure that when you need them the most your doctor is available to you. This would not be possible without our entire staff working together to make it happen.