Family medicine doctors are joining forces to win a bigger role in health care – and be paid for it.

Eight family-physician-related groups, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, have formed Family Medicine for America’s Health, a coalition to sweeten the public perception of what they do and advance their interests through state and federal policies.

The launch of their five-year, $20 million campaign Thursday comes at a critical time for primary-care doctors. Thanks to the health law, millions more people can seek care with newly gained insurance.  But there’s growing debate about whether nurse practitioners and physician assistants should provide a lot more basic care, either on their own or as part of clinics sponsored by pharmacies or other businesses. Some major doctor groups have challenged the ability of lesser-trained medical professionals to independently treat patients.

Glen Stream, chairman of the new coalition, said that it plans to focus on:

– Paying primary-care doctors for more than just office visits, including the time they spend making referrals to specialists, checking in with patients about treatment regimens, being available 24/7 and calling and emailing patients. Specialty doctors generally are paid more for their time and for procedures they do.

– Creating additional incentives for medical school students to go into primary care and tying medical schools’ federal funding to the primary care training they provide.

– Making electronic health records less burdensome, freeing more time for conversation with patients.

– Getting doctors to switch to a team-based, patient-centered “medical home” format, with a payment structure that reflects the work that goes into coordinating care for a patient.

– Persuading private and public employers with health plans to lean on insurers to increase compensation for primary care services.

“If we don’t spend enough on primary care, outcomes in the future will suffer because much of the chronic diseases that drive spending are preventable,” said Stream, a family physician and former president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He added that larger employers could negotiate higher payment rates for primary care when picking an insurance company.

While the campaign is touted as helping patients, it’s also about asserting that family doctors are important.

“It’s always a question of what motivates groups to do these kind of campaigns — is it looking out for patients or your own interests, and generally it’s a combination of both,” said Atul Grover, chief public policy officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges.

In September, the American Academy of Family Physicians announced recommendations on medical school funding, saying teaching hospitals should provide more primary care training as a condition of continuing federal funding at the same level. But Grover said the kind of training medical students receive doesn’t drive what type of doctor they become. The reimbursement system – which typically pays specialists at higher rates – is more important.

Grover also said that while primary care is important, taking funding away from specialty training isn’t necessarily a solution because an aging population will need more specialty care.

Other groups in the coalition are the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, American Board of Family Medicine, American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians, Association of Departments of Family Medicine, Association of Family Medicine Residency Directors, the North American Primary Care Research Group and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Take a break from worrying about Ebola and get a flu shot this fall. While the Ebola virus has so far affected just four people in the United States, tens of millions are expected to get influenza this season. More than 200,000 of them will be hospitalized and up to 49,000 will likely die from it, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A new HuffPost/YouGov poll of 1,000 adults found that the flu is perceived as only slightly more threatening than the Ebola virus, however. Forty-five percent of people polled said that the flu posed a bigger threat to Americans than Ebola, but a substantial 40 percent said it was the other way around. Fifteen percent said they weren’t sure.

“Ebola is new, mysterious, exotic, highly fatal and strange, and people don’t have a sense of control over it,” says William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University.

Influenza, on the other hand, is a familiar illness that people often think they can easily control, Schaffner says. “They think, ‘I could get vaccinated, I could wash my hands’ and prevent it.”

Yet that familiarity may lead to complacency. Flu shots are recommended for just about everyone over six months of age, but less than half of people get vaccinated each year.

Now there’s even more reason to get a shot. The health law requires most health plans to cover a range of preventive benefits at no cost to consumers, including recommended vaccines. The flu shot is one of them. (The only exception is for plans that have been grandfathered under the law.)

The provision making the vaccine available with no out-of-pocket expense is limited to services delivered by a health care provider that is part of the insurer’s network.

Depending on the plan, that could include doctors’ offices, pharmacies or other outlets.

Medicare also covers flu shots without patient cost sharing.

Please contact Kaiser Health News to send comments or ideas for future topics for the Insuring Your Health column.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

FRESNO, Calif. — Inside her single-story home in the dry and dusty Central Valley, Dalia Mondragon scarcely sleeps. Several times a night, she tiptoes into her children’s rooms to make sure their chests are peacefully rising and falling.

“I feel like any time they could stop breathing,” she said.

Mondragon and all four of her children have asthma – a disease that has sent them to the hospital more times than she can count. So she is more than willing to open her home to Nunu Sixay, an asthma prevention worker trying to figure out what is triggering the attacks. On a recent visit, Sixay found some possible culprits: mold in the bathroom and aerosol furniture polish in the kitchen.

Sixay’s work visiting low-income families like the Mondragons is part of a public health experiment to help asthmatic children breathe easier and stay out of costly emergency rooms – with the aim of getting investors to pay for it.

The plan is to create a “social impact bond,” a contract in which Wall Street and other investors agree to support programs with goals such as taxpayer savings and improved health outcomes. If the programs can demonstrate with solid evidence that they have met those goals, the investors recoup their principal and get a return, typically from the government.

The asthma project is among the first to focus on improving health outcomes. But a rising number of “pay for success” projects are planned or underway around the nation, including in Ohio, Connecticut, South Carolina and Massachusetts. One seeks to expand early childhood education in Utah, for instance, and another to reduce homelessness in Colorado.

Typically, private investors or foundations provide at least a portion of the seed money. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, for instance, raised $13.5 million from its investors for a New York project aimed at reducing recidivism and increasing employment among former inmates. Depending on the outcomes, which must be evaluated by an independent third party, the government will repay the investors and provide a return. Generally , it is a slice of taxpayer savings, ranging from 5 to 12 percent of the original investment.

“We were all excited about the idea of a whole new form of impact investing,” said Kirstin Hill, a managing director in Merrill Lynch’s global wealth management business.

The bonds, which first were devised in England, appeal to investors who want to see part of their portfolio go toward what they see as a social good. “People with lots of money are anxious to invest at least a portion in things like this, especially if you give them a reasonable return,” said John Vogel, who teaches business administration at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

Critics, however, say it’s too early to see what impact the bonds will have, and question whether the effects can be accurately measured. Some are skeptical that many private firms will invest.

Growing The Pie

Organizations are looking for ways to “grow the pie of funding that is available to the social sector” rather than relying only on philanthropic and government funds, said Rick Brush, CEO of Collective Health. The Connecticut company is helping to organize the Fresno project with Social Finance, a Boston nonprofit that designs social impact bonds.

Nirav Shah, director of Social Finance, said numerous health programs have a significant impact on patients but are outside of clinical settings so aren’t typically reimbursed by insurers.

In the asthma program, for example, a social impact bond could pay for home renovations such as stripping out carpet or getting rid of mold.

The Fresno project is still in its pilot stage: Organizers won’t start reaching out to investors until late next year Funding from banks, individuals and foundations would enable the asthma prevention program to expand from about 200 children to 3,500, they said. In this case, the returns could come from either the state or insurers, Shah said.

The pilot program, which is funded by a grant of about $1 million from The California Endowment, is using claims data to track ER visits and measure the savings before turning to investors. The estimated savings per child is more than $7,700.

Taking It To Heart

In Fresno, asthma prevention workers ask parents to commit to three changes in the home to help prevent asthma attacks. Throughout the year, they follow up with in-person visits and phone calls. “The little knowledge we give them they really take it to heart,” Sixay said.

One recent day, Sixay stopped by the cramped house of 6-year-old Jovani Garcia-Vasquez. His mother, Maura Vasquez, said she used to rush her son to the hospital every time he had an asthma flare-up. A doctor had advised her not to give the inhaler to her son because he could get addicted to Albuterol. “So I didn’t give it to him, hardly ever,” she said.

After learning from Sixay that the medication actually helps relieve the asthma symptoms, Vasquez began administering it more regularly. She said she hasn’t had to take him to the ER since.

“I didn’t know how to help him,” she said. “Now I know.”

Sixay sat down with Jovani and asked him to point to faces that showed how he felt. When she asked “How is your asthma today?” he pointed to a happy face.

Sixay, who works for the Central California Asthma Collaborative, said she is taking small steps toward solving a big problem. Fresno has one of the highest childhood asthma rates in California, with a fifth of children ages 5 to 17 affected. The county also has high rates of asthma-related pediatric emergency room visits and hospitalizations, paid for primarily by Medi-Cal, California’s public insurance program for poor people. All told, about $35 million is spent countywide per year for hospital costs for children with asthma, according to Collective Health and Social Finance.

The region has relatively poor air quality, said Vipul Jain, a UC San Francisco associate medical professor and pulmonologist at Fresno’s Community Regional Medical Center. “It’s this recurrent, vicious glob [of bad air] that never lets them free,” he said. Poverty, lack of regular care and poor housing conditions also contribute to high hospitalization rates, he said.

Jain said home interventions can certainly help, but good self-management, disease education and clinical care also are needed. Otherwise, “it’s not realistic to expect a significant change,” he said.

The Fresno project is collaborating with Clinica Sierra Vista, a community health center in Fresno, which is providing ongoing medical care. Each day, the clinic’s doctors see asthmatic children like Jose Lomelli, 11.

On a recent September morning, Jose’s mother, Hopie Castro, took him to the doctor because he was coughing and using his inhaler every few hours and she worried he would have to go to the emergency room.

Jose missed about a fifth of the last school year because of asthma and has gone to the hospital more than 15 times in the past several years, Castro said.

Dr. Kami Jow listened to Jose breathe and confirmed that he was having an asthma attack. He prescribed steroids, and he corrected him on using his inhaler so the medicine would flow into his lungs.

“How do I know when to take him to the emergency room?” she asked.

“You’ll see him working really hard to breathe,” he said.

Jow said he often sees families who don’t know what leads to asthma attacks or how or when to use medication. Rarely, he said, does he have the time to educate them thoroughly about the disease.

That’s where workers like Sixay come in.

She sees a lot of progress but faces occasional setbacks. The Mondragons, for instance, had made improvements at home – then recently got a kitten. It’s cute, she told the family, but not good for the airways.

“It’s a process,” she said. “They are not all going to change overnight.”

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.