Ambulatory - ICU (AICU)
The A-ICU project originated from a foundation-funded effort by current CERC faculty to design new forms of health care that would improve health and lower annual per capita health spending both for patients and for employers sponsoring their health plans. The A-ICU and VPC (see below) models emerged from a design collaboration of physicians, nurses, managers and systems engineers.
The A-ICU design is a new primary care model specializing exclusively in the most medically unstable decile of an employer-sponsored health plan, consisting of health plan enrollees likely to consume 55% of a health plan's total spending.
The model is currently being tested in four states. CERC faculty in partnership with peers at harvard medical school are assessing the model's impact on health, patients' experience of care, and per capita health spending compared to a control group.