CIRCLES

Quality medical care is the domain of the treating physician.  Its fundamental elements include education, training, observational skills, and professional judgment.

However, the physician is often hindered in delivering quality care by administrative burdens, financial factors, information overload, narrow medical silos, time constraints, de facto limitations on exercising professional judgment, and obstacles to meaningful collaboration, education, and training.

Circles return the physician to the center of healthcare delivery.  They provide her with the ability to diagnose, treat and monitor each patient on the basis of evidence-based standards of care.  Critically, they enable him to do so in a cost-effective and minimally burdensome manner.   This is the essence of value-based quality care, perhaps the dominant trend in healthcare.