Faculty Bibliography

The Affordable Care Act made admirable strides toward the "triple aim" of reducing health care costs, increasing health care quality, and improving the health of the community at large. A key element of reform is the accountable care organization (ACO), which restructures health care delivery such that networks of providers are held responsible for a group of patients they serve. The recently announced Medicare ACO program lays the foundation for 2 of its 3 major goals by allowing ACOs to share in any cost savings, provided they meet quality criteria. Yet it seems that the public health goals of accountable care-arguably the most important of the 3-have been left behind. To better address public health goals, we propose a novel method for quality reporting within ACOs: introducing an "expanded denominator" that attributes patients to a health system if they have ever been seen within the system. An expanded denominator would ensure that ACOs are held accountable not only for patients already engaged in primary care but also for patients with fragmented care and high-risk community members not receiving adequate care. Ultimately, payment reform in Medicare, and potentially Medicaid, must support this new approach to quality measurement for it to have lasting ramifications.

As comparative effectiveness research becomes a more prominent feature of clinical medicine, investigators and policy makers would do well to seek lessons from prior examples of this type of research. Our analysis of previous examples reveals lessons in three key areas: choice of comparison treatments, time frame of study, and widespread applicability of study results. Based on our observations, we offer suggestions for increasing the clinical applicability of comparative effectiveness research, such as employing surrogate endpoints that meet a specific threshold of validity. Future trials that address these areas of concern hold the greatest promise for improving patients' outcomes.

The intersection of two trends in health intervention has the potential to fundamentally change the practice of medicine. First, research into the social determinants of health is revealing the mechanisms by which living conditions cause disease. Second, the restructuring of primary care around preventive interventions represents the convergence point of medicine and public health. These trends have profound implications for medical education. Whereas traditional educational paradigms favor a "bottom-up" approach to disease-focusing on molecular origins or organ systems-new paradigms must emphasize the entire causal chain of ill health to facilitate the understanding of novel interventions available to tomorrow's clinician.