Dr Jeffrey Lowenkron Outlines Barriers to Care Coordination Among Medicare Beneficiaries

Sharing records and encouraging conversation will promote better collaboration between primary care and cancer care, said Jeffrey Lowenkron, MD, chief medical officer of The Villages Health.

Transcript:

What are some best practices for promoting better collaboration between primary care and cancer care?

Probably the best thing we can do is share records and have conversations with each other. We have a good collaborative, conversational relationship with Florida cancer specialists, which is really the only group that's really delivering cancer care up in The Villages. Our folks really do a nice job of communicating with them and they do a nice job of communicating back.

What are the biggest barriers to good care coordination among Medicare beneficiaries?

I'd say probably the understanding of what really good options are for them, and the idea that many times they'll think their neighbors will have a better suggestion for what their care plan should be, than their physicians. Up in The Villages, everybody knows everybody else and they have a strong network where they all talk to each other. It's helpful in many instances and potentially challenging in others. The overall difficulty for care coordination across the board, is that people are often on separate records. And they're not necessarily all working from the same care plan. That difficulty may put patients in the middle of what's going on instead of having them be the center of all the care.