Primary care practices serving a greater proportion of “high need” patients with multiple health conditions appear to have an edge in treating them over other practices, a Commonwealth Fund–supported study finds. Writing in Health Affairs (March 2017), a research team led by the University of Michigan’s Julia Adler-Milstein reports that high-need patients enrolled in these practices have lower health care costs, fewer hospital admissions, and fewer emergency department visits than those enrolled in practices with a lower proportion of high-need patients.
