November 11, 2011 - This article in the Atlantic Monthly describes how acute episodes of chronic conditions are actually averted by CareMore a primary care group focused on caring for seniors in the community. The article describes how congestive heart failure, diabetic amputations and other acute episodes are averted by the group. It is not a matter of replicating CareMore in Canada, but recognizing the need to create a new primary care system that responds to the actual needs of the people it serves and focuses on earlier interventions that avert acute episodes. The result is a cheaper and better system of care for older people almost all of whom have one or more chronic conditions. The article introduces the idea of the “extensivist†physicians who coordinate various kinds of care for individual patients. For them “a patient is one unified human being, not a collection of disconnected symptoms.†How can we develop more systems that do this kind of things in Canada? How can we as patients encourage this?