Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is a model of providing comprehensive primary care in a health care setting that facilitates a partnership between a patient, his or her personal physician, and the family and caregiver.
PCMH has drawn recent federal government and widespread media attention as a way to improve patient satisfaction and health care quality, promote prevention, and add value to the patient experience. Some government and healthcare leaders see the model as a tool to relieve the primary care crisis, and it has growing support from purchasers, consumers, physicians and insurers.
At the national level, PCMH is being driven by the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC). The Collaborative is a coalition of major employers, consumer groups, patient quality organizations, health plans, labor unions, hospitals, physicians and many others who have joined together to develop and advance the PCMH. The PCPCC has well over 500 members, including several in Florida: Florida Healthcare Coalition, MetCare of Florida, Tampa Family Health Centers, Inc., and The Quantum Group.
Healthcare Information Technology Investment
In a Medical Home environment, care is facilitated by registries, healthcare information technology (HIT), health information exchange, and other means to assure that patients get the care they need when and where they need and want it. HIT is utilized appropriately to support optimal patient care, performance measurement, patient education, and enhanced communication.
Commitment to transforming from a traditional model of care to a Medical Home requires a significant financial investment. Federal government funds are available for HIT infrastructure. In the Federal economic stimulus program, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), there are significant funds for building up the IT infrastructure for physician practices with a focus on digitizing patient records for accuracy and easier access.
Some states are offering incentives for health care organizations to invest in HIT tools for PCMH. In other states, individual healthcare organizations strongly believe in the purpose of PCMH and are investing in HIT themselves.
For example, MetCare of Florida is investing in HIT while undergoing a transformation to PCMH with its 10 South and Central Florida offices. MetCare implemented electronic prescribing in 2008. Throughout 2009/2010, the Company will deploy a fully-integrated electronic medical record (EMR) system to automate improved care processes for scheduling, clinical documentation, diagnostic test ordering, remote access, review of laboratory and other diagnostic tests, and communications for assigning tasks within each medical office. The EMR will equip MetCare physicians with paperless patient information that can be securely accessed anytime, anywhere. Patients everywhere will enjoy the security of knowing that wherever they travel in the state of Florida, a MetCare office will be able to access their complete medical records in seconds.
Additionally, MetCare is deploying speech recognition software and an interactive patient education program to provide self-management tools and is scanning all existing paper medical records to provide a highly efficient and paperless office.
PCMH pilots are underway across the country. While initial results are showing steady health gains, a reduction of hospital admissions, and an increase in patient satisfaction with the quality of care they receive, time and measurements will tell whether or not there is a return on investment. To many healthcare providers for now, the satisfaction of seeing an increase in care quality and patient satisfaction is enough incentive to transform to a Medical Home care model.
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