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Trust is a fundamental aspect of any human relationship, and medical care is no exception. An ongoing, trusting relationship between clinicians and patients has shown demonstrable value to primary care. However, there is currently no measure of trust in general use, and none endorsed for use by most value-based payment programs. This review searched the literature for any existing measures of patient trust in primary care clinicians and assessed their potential to be implemented as a patient-reported outcome measure.
In February of this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced its “Universal Foundation” for aligning quality measures across its own programs. The CMS effort is not specific to primary care, but it defines an initial list of measures that falls almost entirely on primary care to capture and comply. It is also directly opposed to recent recommendations to reduce clinician burden, to align measures with the purpose and function of care delivery, and to promote person-centeredness.
The District’s dire health disparities were on the mind of D.C. native Madeline Taskier, M.D. ’19, when she chose a career in family medicine as the best way to help her community. After earning her degree at George Washington University, she pursued a family medicine residency―and encountered the tremendous barriers her patients often faced in health care.
“The other trainees and I were constantly frustrated by the way our patients were treated within the system,” Taskier said. “I’d think, ‘why is the medicine I’ve prescribed not covered by insurance? Why does my patient have to wait a month and a half for this test?’ This all relates to health policy, and I came away from residency wanting to understand why this doesn’t work for us and our patients.”