What do you know about Community Health Centers (CHCs)? Would you be surprised to know that a recent study found that CHCs are providing better quality care to patients on most quality measures than private practices? It’s true; in August 2012, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published a study that says just that.
To find out how CHCs compare to private practice, researchers compared visits made to private practices and visits made to CHCs recorded in the 2006-2008 National Ambulatory Medical care survey. When they looked at how each performed, the researchers found that CHCs better adhere to national care guidelines than private practices on a third (6 of 18) of quality measures. And on 11 other measures, CHCs did just as well as private practice. There was only one measure on which CHCs fell slightly short.
Some examples of quality measures that researchers compared include management of common chronic diseases, use of preventive counseling, use of screening tests, and appropriate prescriptions for elderly patients.
CHCs look even better when the researchers adjusted for patient characteristics. It turns out that people who visit CHCs tend to have more chronic disease and socioeconomic complexity, but when the researchers adjusted for those factors, the private practice primary care physicians no longer performed better than CHCs on any of the measures.
Here at Colorado Community Health Network (CCHN), we are proud, but not surprised by these results. That’s because we know the teams at Colorado’s CHCs are top notch. And we also know that people who work at CHCs tend to really like their jobs. They say that working in a supportive team atmosphere, with state-of-the-art equipment, and with appreciative patients, makes the work meaningful and enjoyable.
If you’re interested in joining a high quality clinical or administrative team at one of Colorado’s 17 CHCs, check out the CHAMPS job board, or visit MissionDrivenCareers.org for more information.
