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Dietitians and Patient Centered Medical Homes

                A Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) isn’t a hospital, nursing home or type of home health care.  It’s an emerging trend in the health care field.  It is described as a health care model that focuses on giving patients 24/7 access to their health care providers and the ability to schedule same day appointments.  It is meant to give the patient more control over their own health and allow for a more active role in their plan of care.   In addition to the patient driven approach, this model places more emphasis on long term health and improvement versus treating acute episodes of disease or complications from a chronic illness.
                Currently, those patients using the PCMH model have a primary physician that oversees all aspects of that patient’s plan of care.  This includes trips to the hospitals, care at nursing homes and working with home health care agencies.  RDs are slowly making their way to the integrated team of the PCMH.  RDs have proven to be an invaluable resource for helping patients manage their chronic illnesses; however those involved in setting up PCMHs believe RDs need to be more specialized in the management of specific chronic diseases.  With the high rates of diabetes in patients taking part in PCMHs, RDs that are certified diabetes educators would be extremely beneficial.  This is an area where RDs can really demonstrate their knowledge and help their patients develop self-management plans with diabetes or other chronic illnesses.

Link to the article:
http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/080112p26.shtml

AF

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