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Patient Centered Medical Home
What is a Patient Centered Medical Home?
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The medical home also known as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), is defined as "a health care setting that facilitates partnerships between individual patients, and their personal providers, and when appropriate, the patient’s family". It is "an approach to providing comprehensive primary care for children, youth and adults". The provision of medical homes may allow better access to health care, increase satisfaction with care, and improve health.
A Revolution in Health Care in the US
Employers that subsidize health care coverage want to provide access to care that delivers excellent outcomes, creates patient confidence and satisfaction and is affordable for all who pay -- a challenge we have yet to meet. For many companies, increases in the cost of health care far outpace increases in revenues and wages, yet nearly half of the U.S. general public is dissatisfied with the care they receive.
The patient centric primary care alternative
We also know that primary care -- a single and continuous source for comprehensive care that considers the whole person, along with his or her family and community -- supported by up-to-date and complete information that allows medical professionals to make good clinical decisions, has a far different outcome.
Research studies in countries where patient-physician relationships focus on primary care consistently show that people live longer, populations are healthier, patients are more satisfied with their care and everyone pays less. These "primary care providers" do more preventive health counseling, perform more screenings and immunizations, and provide care advocacy and coordination that lead to lower rates of death for heart disease, cancer, and stroke; and lower rates of hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive diagnoses like pneumonia. Chronic condition management and medical errors and omissions are significantly reduced with this "patient-centered" primary care.
Primary care is not gate keeping or restricting access to care. A primary care practitioner is a partner in care, a coach, an advisor and the person who assumes overall responsibility for coordinating care among all heath service providers, always focusing on the best interests and personal preferences of the patient.
The principles we are striving to follow:
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Personal physician: "each patient has an ongoing relationship with a personal physician trained to provide first contact, continuous and comprehensive care."
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Physician directed medical practice: "the personal physician leads a team of individuals at the practice level who collectively take responsibility for the ongoing care of patients."
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Whole person orientation: "the personal physician is responsible for providing for all the patient’s health care needs or taking responsibility for appropriately arranging care with other qualified professionals."
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Care is coordinated and/or integrated, for example across specialists, hospitals, home health agencies, and nursing homes.
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Quality and safety are assured by a care planning process, evidence based medicine, clinical decision-support tools, performance measurement, active participation of patients in decision-making, information technology, a voluntary recognition process, quality improvement activities, and other measures.
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Enhanced access to care is available (e.g., via "open scheduling, expanded hours and new options for communication").
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Payment must "appropriately recognize[s] the added value provided to patients who have a patient-centered medical home." For instance, payment should reflect the value of "work that falls outside of the face-to-face visit," should "support adoption and use of health information technology for quality improvement," and should "recognize case mix differences in the patient population being treated within the practice."
Please look at the following information below for our agreement with you to provide you with a true Patient Centered Medical Home experience:
To fulfill this partnership, we will:
Respect you as an individualand Explain diseases, treatments and results.
and Listen to your feelings and questions to help you make decisions and set healthy goals.
and Keep medical information and records private.
Provide safe and qualified careand Provide you with your own doctor.
and Provide clear directions about medicines and treatments.
and Send you to trusted experts, if needed.
and End every visit with clear instructions about expectations, treatment goals, medicines and future plans.
Strive to build flexibility to schedule you with your personal physician/provider whenever possible
and Provide 24-hour phone access to the health care team.In return, we trust you to:
Be in charge of your health
and Learn about wellness and preventing disease and make healthy decisions.
and Learn what your insurance covers.
and Be honest and thorough about your history, symptoms and any changes in your health.
and Tell us what medications you are taking and ask for refills during your office visit.
and Tell us when you see other doctors, medications they have prescribed and ask them to send a report about your care.
Be a good patient
and Take all of your medicine and follow your treatment plan, or tell us if you cannot do so.
and Respect us as partners in your care.
and Pay your share of the office visit fee when you are seen in the office.
and Keep your appointments as scheduled, or call and let us know if you need to cancel.
Communicate with us
and Ask questions, share feelings, be part of your care.
and Call your doctor first with all problems, unless it is a medical emergency.
and Provide us with feedback to improve services.
and End every visit with a clear understanding of your doctor’s expectations, treatment goals and future plans.
click here for a PDF version of our responsiblities
