Teamwork, Patient Care and the Client Experience

Presentation Description / Summary: Specialization increases fragmentation, decreasing interdisciplinary collaboration. This traditional siloed approach of treating human and animal patients could lead to worse outcomes, higher costs and decreased patient / owner satisfaction. Similarities between human and veterinary care are: treatment decision are normally triggered by difficult to predict health episodes, care is provided by experts that more often than not understand little about the costs associated with delivering care and emotional and financial tradeoffs are important in the decision making process. The people relationship with animals has changed to the point that today pets are considered as a family member. Thus in the case of illness, owners are likely to seek specialized care for their animal demanding more and more high end medical treatment. In health care, value has been defined as the health outcomes achieved that matter to patients relative to the cost of achieving those outcomes. In order to increase value, one or more outcomes need to be improved without raising costs and or lowering cost without negatively affecting the outcomes. Organizing around the patient / owner and their needs would require a shift from the siloed organization by specialty department and discrete service to organizing around the patients’ medical condition. Organizing the patient care team (clinical and non-clinical) into integrated practice units, would allow for collaboration and cooperation to improve care. Studies have shown that when generalist and specialist work together, patients outcomes improved.

Learner Outcomes: Learn about the importance of multidisciplinary colaboration Learn from trends in human health care Learn about the importance of quality of care