title: Cold spotting.
abstract: Discusses issues that need to be addressed when collaborating to build a healthy community. One of these is the problem of "superutilizers." Superutilizers cost the health care system millions of dollars. Just a tiny fraction of patients account for greater than 50% of our health care costs. Urban blight is another. Health care is disintegrated in blighted neighborhoods. But urban blight is not the only place where health care is disintegrated. There are suburbs and gated communities where people live in isolation, lacking integrated primary care and behavioral health; poor collaboration between public health and medical providers, schools, and community organizations. A community of solution is a 50-year-old term that may provide part of the solution. A community of solution finds the communities where health care problems are not just individuals; it identifies the problem and finds those who can provide a local solution. Our problems are not individual patients, but broader, systemic, community-based. The cure requires a community of solution linking public health, primary care, and behavioral health in explicit partnerships.
authors.affiliation: Colorado HealthOP.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Westfall
mesh_terms: D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003120:Colorado; D015897:Comorbidity; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006801:Humans; D044382:Population Groups; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014481:United States