Welcome to the website of the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. We are privileged to be a part of the Emory Woodruff Health Science Center with a wealth of resources, but also to provide patient care, educate medical and Physician Assistant students, medical residents and practicing clinical providers, and to conduct research in community based settings. Our partnerships with the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory Global Health Institute, US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Human Resources provide our faculty and students additional opportunities for education, community service, and research

As a primary care department, we serve to facilitate access to the best in specialty care within our institution and affiliates. We hope you will take the time to investigate this site to learn more about us and what we do. Please use this site as a resource for health-related information, and links to clinical care, education, and research information sources.

What is Primary Care?

Primary care provides patient advocacy in the health care system to accomplish cost-effective care by coordination of health care services. Primary care promotes effective communication with patients and encourages the role of the patient as a partner in health care.

American Academy of Family Physicians website (www.aafp.org)

Primary care includes health promotion, disease prevention, health maintenance, counseling, patient education, diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illnesses in a variety of health care settings (e.g., office, inpatient, critical care, long-term care, home care, day care, etc.). Primary care is performed and managed by a personal physician often collaborating with other health professionals, and utilizing consultation or referral as appropriate.

Family Medicine is one of the primary care the medical specialties (General Internal Medicine and General Pediatrics are the others) which provides continuing, comprehensive health care for the individual and family and recognizes the role of family and community in effective care. It is a specialty in breadth that integrates the biological, clinical and behavioral sciences. The scope of family medicine encompasses all ages and genders from birth to the elderly, each organ system and every disease entity. (Adapted from the American Academy of Family Physicians website)

What is Preventive Medicine?

Medical specialists in Preventive Medicine are uniquely trained in both clinical medicine and Public Health. They have the skills needed to understand and reduce the risks of disease, disability and death in individuals and in population groups. You can find preventive medicine trained physicians working in primary care settings and managed care organizations, in public health and government agencies, in workplaces and in academia.

What is the Patient and Family-Centered Medical Home Model of Healthcare delivery?

Most people are aware of the national conversation on healthcare delivery system reform to improve the health of populations and the experience of care, and to reduce the per capita cost of care. The Emory Department of Family and Preventive Medicine passionately believes in the Patient and Family-Centered Medical Home (PFCMH) model of care and is working toward incorporating tall of the he core characteristics of this model.

Everyone should have a regular primary care provider, who knows their healthcare issues, respects their personal values, empowers them to understand and take control of their own health, coordinates and facilitates specialty care as needed. A community-based PFCMH utilizing Family Physicians and their team of providers, based in the patients’ home or work community, considers not just the whole person, but how their family and community impacts and is impacted by their health issues. The PFCMH model of health care delivery is driven by what patients and their families value most. Most patients want convenient and timely access, and the knowledge, skills, and support for as much self-management as possible.

The Patient and Family-Centered Medical Home model incorporates the process of community-oriented primary care and the concept of the Advanced Medical Home. The key concept that underpins the new Medical Home model is the relationship-centered personal medical home for all patients, which serves as the focal point through which all individuals participate in their health care. The personal medical home includes a necessary and consistent set of acute, chronic, and preventive medical care services that are accessible, accountable, comprehensive, integrated, patient-centered, safe, scientifically valid, and satisfying to both patients and their physicians.

As Dr. Donald Berwick, President of the Institute for Health Care Improvement states "Patient-Centered Care is exactly the help I need and want exactly when I need and want it."

If you would like to know more about the role of primary care in healthcare reform, a recent ABC News video clip about the Mayo Clinic experience is available at the following link: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7302887

If you would like to learn more about the Patient and Family-Centered Medical Home model of care, the following link to the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative (http://www.pcpcc.net/) to a short video, produced by the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative and Emmi Solutions, provides an introduction to the concept of the Patient and Family-Centered Medical Home: http://www.pcpcc.net/content/emmi.

"Success is to be measured not
so much by the position that one
has reached in life as by the
obstacles which he has overcome"

Booker T. Washington