Midwest Clinical Group
Midwest Clinical Group is an independent Pathways corporate division that focuses on healthcare technologies. Dramatically increased health knowledge strains the clinical practice model.
A single physician working with a single patient in a single “doctor-patient” relationship is unable to effectively apply all that is known about a condition. Doctors first responded to this reality by establishing clinical specialties such as Internal Medicine, Family Practice, or General Surgery.
Soon it became necessary to start more specific specialties within each general category and physicians began to limit their practices to sub-specialties. Two problems emerged from this strategy. First, doctors still could not keep up. Second, the healthcare system became complicated for individual patients forced to see many specialists.
It is ironic. A single health condition can cause many clinical problems, but all occur within a single person. Many patients with chronic conditions have too many doctors located in too many places. Doctors have tried to solve this problem by practicing in “multi-specialty groups,” but this strategy led to huge medical centers that cause still more problems.
As a system becomes more complex, coordination falls and costs rise. Today, the healthcare system itself is like a “patient” who needs critical care.
MCG, the Pathways Healthcare Technologies Group, “treats” this problem by helping healthcare professionals adopt management systems that support patient centered communication systems, integrated databases, and anytime-anywhere access to personal health solutions.
Products and Services
- Patient-Centered Healthcare Management Consultation
- Patient-Centered Medical Home Project Teams
- Integrated “Virtual Clinic” Medical Databases
- Real-Time Diagnostic and Case Management Support
- Automated Patient Care Coordination
- Patient Education Technologies
Organization
MCG healthcare consulting and project development teams are drawn from the Pathways network of health professionals and companies. Projects are selected on the basis of their relevance to needs for health system improvement. Work groups focus on problem analysis and systems engineering principles rather than direct management. They develop problem-solving strategies and support implementation.
In some cases MCG organizes demonstration projects and manages them until they are ready to operate independently. For example, to address the need for better integration of neuromedical and primary healthcare for Traumatic Brain Injury, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other chronic neurologic conditions not usually managed by primary care professionals, MCG has created a problem detection, assessment, and case management model to be located in a primary care clinic.
MCG will manage the new service until it is fully operational and then actively support it via long range communications.
Operations
A five-member Pathways executive management group leads MCG operations. A divisional level management team selects, trains, assigns, and evaluates project management teams that operate as independent collaborative enterprises. Pathways executive level management functions as a management consultant for MCG in its role as healthcare projects leader.
Because each project team is free to operate as an independent collaborative business unit, it has management flexibility to establish partnering or consulting relationships that optimize efficiency for each healthcare project selected by the MCG leadership group. Each healthcare project team determines when new clinical operations should be managed on site until fully independent.
Marketing and Sales
These functions are managed by the Pathways executive team so that they can be coordinated with marketing and sales activities of other Pathways groups. Allocations for these activities are charged as outsource expenses to MCG.
Finance
Marketing, sales, capital management, and accounting functions are provided by Pathways as an outsource provider. Costs for these services are charged to MCG by Pathways.
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