Community Care, an Optimal Setting for the Treatment of Complex Cases

Abstract

Much of medicine is taught in large, highly structured academic medical centers, with access to multiple specialties and subspecialties for treating highly specific, at times esoteric, clinical problems. Physicians who accomplish most of their clinical training in such institutions are accustomed to the access to resources and personnel they provide. In contrast, community-based primary care practice is often more self-contained, the physician typically taking ownership of most manageable cases. The range of readily accessible invasive and other state-of-the-art technically-based procedures is more limited than in the academic medical center. However, everything considered, community-based treatment is often the preferred location for treating chronic, complex patients, since this treatment model can provide continuity of care and the often necessary personal-social “engineering” less central to care at the typical academic medical center.