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Widely heralded as the change that exemplifies health care reform, the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is not a place but an approach. The PCMH provides continuous, comprehensive, coordinated care, establishing a partnership between patients and their personal healthcare team as part of an integrated medical neighborhood. The medical home focuses on the whole person, providing coordinated, integrated care across all elements of the complex medical system.
The PCMH features:
- Enhanced access, making it easier for patients to contact their personal healthcare team.
- Emphasis on prevention and proactive management of chronic conditions, improving clinical quality and safety
- Teaching to engage patients in their care to attain optimum health
- Technology, such as electronic health records, to facilitate information exchange, storage and retrieval
To enable medical practices to make this transformation and build the appropriate infrastructure, the PCMH model realigns payment to blend standard fee-for-service reimbursement, a monthly care management fee and a bonus for meeting or exceeding quality outcomes. Theoretically, this compensation model will shift the focus of care away from acute, episodic encounters toward more comprehensive, holistic care. It will incorporate both lower costs and better outcomes.
HealthTeamWorks advocates the PCMH model and has developed programs to establish its framework in medical practices. Our coaching and technology assistance enable them to improve operations, incorporate quality approaches and increase patients' satisfaction with their healthcare.
Although the PCMH model has great potential as the future of healthcare delivery, few practices are positioned to become medical homes. Most lack the time, expertise and resources to transform their care delivery methods. The HealthTeamWorks transformation program enables practices to develop the necessary infrastructure and support systems. Our approach narrows the gap between today’s fragmented healthcare system and tomorrow’s integrated approach.
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