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Featured Article: Patient-Centered Medical Home

What is a medical home?

A medical home, also known as a patient-centered medical home, is used to describe a health care model in which individuals use primary care practices as the basis for accessible, continuous, comprehensive and integrated care. In this model, each patient has an ongoing relationship with a personal physician who will:

• Lead a team of individuals at the practice level who collectively take responsibility for the ongoing care of patients.
• Provide first-contact, continuous, and comprehensive care.
• Take responsibility for providing for all of the patient’s health care needs – including acute, chronic, preventive, and end-of-life care – or arrange for that care with other qualified professionals.

The goal of the medical home is to provide a patient with a broad spectrum of care, both preventive and curative, over a period of time and to coordinate all of the care the patient receives.

What are the trends driving the medical home model?

• A growing shortage of primary care clinicians due to adverse practice conditions
• The increasing prevalence of chronic diseases among the U.S. population.

What are the benefits of a medical home?

• The medical home will provide a more comprehensive approach to primary care, more holistic and integrated care, and a more collaborative physician-patient relationship. During physicians’ teachable moments with their patients, the medical home model should help to reinforce information and knowledge sharing.
• Reforming health care reimbursement processes to pay physicians for care coordination should result in more adherence to evidence-based medicine and higher-quality care overall.
• Physicians could partner with care management vendors and hospitals to achieve economies of scale for purchasing the technologies needed for care coordination (i.e., call centers, health coaching, patient advocacy, etc.).
• Realigned incentives supporting evidence-based medicine would address the mis/over/under use quality issues currently plaguing the U.S. health care system, resulting in fewer safety issues and improved clinical and financial outcomes.
• Improved clinical and financial outcomes would help produce a more productive and competitive workforce in an increasingly global economy.

What does MDnetSolutions provide to facilitate a medical home?

Through our Medical Call Center, MDnetSolutions provides coordinated care management and patient education tools to facilitate a patient-centered medical home. Our Care Managers coordinate a patient’s medical team, led by the primary care physician, and including nurses, pharmacists, disease managers and case managers, to ensure high-quality patient care. Through outreach programs and Web-based tools, we act as a liaison between the patient and medical home team members, schedule appointments, provide health and wellness education, medication compliance, and chronic condition compliance.

Source: The Medical Home: Disruptive Innovation for a New Primary Care Model, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions