Initiative against the growing supply pressure – HÄV presents the HÄPPI team practice concept
07.11.2023 12:10
The Association of General Practitioners (HÄV) is today presenting for the first time the care concept “General Practitioner Primary Care Center – Interprofessional Patient Care”, or HÄPPI for short, developed in cooperation with the University of Heidelberg. Prof. Dr. explains this. Nicola Buhlinger-Göpfarth, co-federal chairwoman of the General Practitioners Association: “With HÄPPI we are responding to the constantly growing pressure on care that is increasingly bringing our practices to their knees. Our offer to politicians, health insurance companies, but especially to general practitioners' practices, shows how teamwork can be made more efficient and future-oriented under the direction of general practitioners and with the help of digital tools.
The HÄPPI concept offers structures and framework conditions that make working easier in times when the need for primary care care is constantly increasing and should enable new forms of team collaboration. For this purpose, possible adjustment screws in the practical processes and teamwork were identified as part of a scientific survey. A central element is to give practice employees more tasks in patient care, depending on their specialist knowledge and under the supervision of family doctors. Other important pillars of the concept include greater patient focus through the integration of structured patient-reported outcomes, as well as the increased use of digital tools to make practice management more efficient. The aim is for the “HÄPPI practice” to be an additional offering to complement the already established practice models in the future.
More and more patients, less and less time
“Our current practice reality is as follows: more and more patients, less and less time. Without a stronger, more structured delegation of services that do not require medical expertise, we will no longer be able to provide care in our practices in many places. More and more contact points cannot and must not be the solution, otherwise care will become increasingly chaotic and error-prone due to increasing fragmentation. Therefore, in a HÄPPI practice, the family doctor continues to bear responsibility and remains the head of care. What is new is that employees are being more closely integrated into patient care within the scope of their knowledge and using digital tools,” says Dr. Markus Beier, co-federal chairman of the General Practitioners Association. “This should give family doctors more time for patients who urgently need their medical expertise. Of course, not every practice will have to be a HÄPPI practice in the future. But for those practices that want to work more as a team, there is now a concept with HÄPPI to take a lot of the pressure off their shoulders.”
Contracts for family doctor-centered care provide the perfect foundation
Nicola Buhlinger-Göpfarth adds: “With our concept we have taken the first big step. Now it is important to get HÄPPI into the supply chain as quickly as possible. A key aspect will of course be the financial framework. To do this, we are looking for strong partners with the health insurance companies and are already in discussions about this. Our contracts for family doctor-centered care provide the perfect foundation for making such an innovative care concept a reality as quickly as possible. Another important step is the legal requirements in order to be able to fully implement HÄPPI. Here we expect politicians to support us on our way to rethinking and living delegation under the umbrella of general practice.”
The HÄPPI concept is under www.haev.de/HÄPPI available for download.