Dr. Mary Jean Vorwald was excited to practice medicine closer to home when she moved to a new provider, CenterWell Senior Primary Care in Indianapolis’ College Park, just south of Zionsville.
But what she looks forward to most is the change in how she delivers healing services to patients.
Vorwald worked in Zionsville from 1992 to 2014, first at a practice she owned, then later for a large health care system.
After 2014, she worked with Everside Health in direct patient care. Direct care is a model where patients and doctors have control over the service of medicine, rather than insurance providers. Vorwald said it is referred to as a “value-based” model of care.
“Providers are paid for and supported to provide quality of care, not quantity of care,” Vorwald said. “We’re allowed to spend more time with the patients. The way I like to describe it to people is getting back to the way primary care used to be, where primary care took care of the bulk of your needs.”
Vorwald said the model, which she uses with her new employer, is a bit of a return to old-fashioned medicine.
“I grew up with a family doctor who took care of everything, from a broken leg to all sorts of things,” she said. “The current system, with the hospitals sort of running things, it’s more about getting 30 people in a day because that’s the only way they’re going to reimburse their primary care people.”
At CenterWell, Vorwald provides direct patient care for seniors 65 and older. CenterWell works with patients on Medicare and Medicaid to help bring health care services to underserved communities.
“It’s primary care that’s built more around seniors,” Vorwald said. “We’re going to focus on chronic conditions and spend more time with them so they can ask more questions, understand their medications and feel like they can spend more time discussing those things. But also, we’re looking for preventative measures that are specifically for seniors. We’re looking at immunizations, how long they are on certain medications. Then we’ve also built into the model support from a social worker, a pharmacist, a care navigator and a mental health specialist. So, we’ve got a whole team to support the social and mental well-being of seniors specifically.”
Vorwald said CenterWell can help make connections for seniors who have difficulty navigating day-to-day challenges like transportation and food insecurity, while also providing outreach and education in a community center-type environment for when those seniors aren’t with the doctor.
CenterWell facilities come with a community room that is for more than just patients. The community room hosts events throughout the week, including bingo, chair yoga, crafting educational and enrichment activities and support for seniors and their caregivers.
“You don’t even have to be a patient here,” Vorwald said. “The idea is to give seniors a place to go and socialize and maybe learn a new skill or craft. Some of it is exercise, some is just fun stuff. It’s just connecting with the community.”
Vorwald said care for seniors can often be fragmented, with patients seeing several doctors for multiple needs or ailments.
“We’ve gone too far away from having that medical home that a lot of people used to refer to, where the primary care physician can review (their overall health),” she said. “That’s one of our priorities, the idea being that if you allow primary care to do that, you’re actually going to save money downstream, because you’re going to have less hospitalizations, less ER visits, you may be able to trim out some specialists. I have patients who go and see a specialist every year and they don’t know why.”
Vorwald said with a general lack of primary care available, CenterWell is trying to build around what seniors need.
“Those of us who have been in primary care for as long as I have, we’re realizing the current system isn’t working,” she said. “We need to get away from that productivity mill that is the way that primary care is currently reimbursed, because it’s not working.”
Learn more about CenterWell services at centerwellprimarycare.com.
