Efforts to Improve Primary Care Delivery to Nursing Home Residents

OBJECTIVE: To describe a primary care practice model used by health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that serve Medicare beneficiaries to improve the provision of primary care to nursing home residents. PARTICIPANTS: Medicare beneficiaries who reside in nursing homes and who are enrolled in HMOs. CONCLUSION: Several HMOs are using physician‐nurse practitioner teams to provide primary care to nursing home residents. The potential to improve the delivery of these services in nursing homes, particularly to long‐stay residents, is apparent. However, obstacles arise in developing this practice model in HMOs, including difficulty recruiting both nurse practitioners and physicians and the lack of HMO‐based research on the effects of such a model.