ABSTRACT
THE CLARION CALL HAS BEEN SOUNDED FOR A NEW KIND OF HEALTH care and new kinds of health professionals. If the twentieth century was characterized by fee-for-service reimbursement, an emphasis on what the physician does, and preoccupation with acute hospital-based care, the twenty-first century is likely to focus much more on bundled-payment models, the value of what intra- and interprofessional teams collectively accomplish (aka outcomes), and care coordination across the health continuum, with an eye to managing chronic health problems so patients stay out of the hospital. The various quality reports produced by the Institute of Medicine in the last dozen years have described the enormous gap between current error-prone realities and desired quality care, noting that all twenty-first-century health professionals must learn to provide patient-centered care as part of interdisciplinary teams, employ evidence-based practices, and utilize quality-improvement methods and informatics solutions. 1-3
