In my first blog post on the health care ruling, I kept mentioning the phrase, “health teams.” In part two, we’ll discuss what that means.
On page 435, section 3502, of the law, the title says, “Establishing Community Health Teams to Support the Patient-Centered Medical Home.” Yawn… Don’t fall asleep, yet; stay with me. It gets better.
The law goes on to state that the Secretary of Health and Human Services will create a program to give grants or contracts to special groups.
These special groups are called “health teams,” and they will support primary care practices. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? A health team is just a special group that supports primary care practices.
The law goes on and on for the requirements to become a health team. Since I’m not a health care policy expert, the requirements seemed substantial at first. And that would be negative for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) providers (see my previous post for details).
But as I read the section a few times, I realized much of it was open to interpretation. In other words, it may be easier for many groups to qualify for a grant or government contract than I first thought. Of course qualifying isn’t the same as winning the grant/contract. But it’s nice to know that many groups could qualify. That would mean that we could have plenty of health teams out there.
The more health teams, the more potential use of CAM providers. The more use of CAM providers, the more we could save on health care costs. As you can tell, this kind of talk gets me jazzed. If your analysis is different, the same, or you have any thoughts about the law, please post below.
And if you were thinking, “William, I’d love to post, but I misplaced my copy of the law,” then this is your lucky day. Click on the link below for your copy.