Table 3.

PCPs’ Recommendations for Wider Dissemination of the Weight Management Program and Integration Into Primary Care Practice

Recommendation	Representative quotations
Coaches provide accessible, efficient, actionable & specific feedback to PCPs	If [the weight progress report] came [into the health record] like the labs came…I could easily look at that… I need bullets: boom, boom, boom…. The time pressure is immense and anything to do in a shorter time, the better. Would be better if [I] could log in to [myself] to get the result, to go to a website and say, ‘All right, I’m going to download your results,’ rather than having to wait for it to be sent to us…
Weight program integrates into primary care practice’s systems	[A] standardized group of questions, when the patient came to me [so] I wouldn’t have to take 20 min of a 15-min visit…I would say… ‘You’ve lost weight,’ or, ‘I see you’re still with the program’, ‘Do you have a goal?’ …and then we could easily put it in the system…[I[t reinforces the fact that we’re working together for you to lose this [weight]. [Patients] identify this place as “their home,” so whatever we build in, we’d have to do it through here to …have a better success rate.
Coach, not PCP, delivers weight counseling because was effective and PCP does not have time or specific skill set	[F]or those of us …seeing 25 patients a day, it’s prohibitive for me to have another something that I have to clock into to pull up information to check into… so I wouldn’t want another thing to do for patients to come in, going into another system, pulling up something out of a—but it would be good…if I had time set aside for this. I think that coach was vital.
Counseling by phone for patient convenience and clinic space constraints	[P]eople don’t have a whole lot of time, so the call-in feature or doing things after hours, off hours was a benefit…Not having to be someplace helped them. Space is at a premium a lot of the time here.
Identify sustainable payment models for program	To make this happen one of the insurers [would need to say], ‘Look, this is a great idea’…[then], pay for it and we’d get money. [Our patients] pay for Jenny Craig… it’s a question of compet[ing] in the marketplace cost-wise. I think it’s such a big satisfier for patients to get their care through our office…If [we charged a fee], I think maybe [our patients] would go for it. A medical home [model]…I’m thinking of your patient who dropped four meds. That’s a savings to the health care system, ‘cause health care system needs more programs like this to save the system. [T[his type of stuff wouldn’t make you money like within the next year, but certainly down [the road].