Patient Centered Medical Homes

Patient Centered Medical Homes

In the 1960s, the medical home concept referred to as patient centered medical home was developed.In order to reform the healthcare in the U.S.; the patient centered medical homes are evolving as a centerpiece of efforts (Bates, 2010). Basically, PCMH can be defines as a primary care model that offers coordinated and comprehensive care to the patients in order to improve health outcomes. PCMH is also recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Patient centered medical homes can be portrayed as a team of people working together in form of a community. The purpose is to improve the health as well as healing of the people in that community. In comparison with the primary care, PCMH is more responsive towards the needs of local patients.

PCMH offers a number of benefits including complementary nutrition as well as wellness counseling along with providing prevention education so as to self-manage chronic conditions including diabetes and asthma. Patients under care of PCMH get to make use of longer office visits with having access 24 hours a day. As a result of such flexible timings at the centers, scheduling of appointments is easier. Also, personalized care is provided by a team who is aware of your medical history and knows you. With PCMH patient is entitled to access to doctors who make use of improved technologies to stay better connected with medical community and manage care more efficiently.

However, the operation of PCMH might just give advantage to those who already are more educated and healthier. As per some earlier evidence, children didn't have much access to a medical home if they belonged to comparatively less socially cohesive neighborhoods, neighborhoods with lesser amenities or less safe neighborhoods (Aysola et al. 2011). Though, those who are more susceptible must be given special attention.

According to the Affordable Care Act, PCMH is supported as the tool that would help in reshaping the delivery of health care in the U.S. As indicated in Section 3502 of the Affordable Care Act, the health care providers employed in PCMH need to develop as well as implement interdisciplinary, inter-professional care plans with the purpose of integrating clinical and community preventive and health promotion services for patients (Nutting et al. 2009). According to ACA, PCMH provides the flexibility that is required at the moment to meet the health care needs of diverse communities and encourages adoption. It can be said that even though Patient Centered Medical Home's do hold a lot of potential in fixing the broken healthcare system in the United States of America, yet simultaneously, it is facing a number of problems with reference to professional support, payment reform and patient participation.

The patient-centered medical homes are being promoted with the purpose of organizing health services delivery whilst keeping costs low, and providing superior health care outcomes and coordination of care. PCMH is basically a health care delivery practice with the aim of engaging patients in care, together with giving them integrated and coordinated care. Practices of this sort are equipped with an integrated health information technology system. In addition, are supported by an adequate payment arrangement that distinguishes the added value of patient-centered components (Bates, 2010).

In the model of patient centered medical home, the patient is put in the center of the care model where all of the needs and concerns are taken care of. The top priority is to satisfy the patients with quality care and safety. The treatment provided in PCMH are cost-efficient, in addition the physician payments reflects the PCMH's added value. In a PCMH, the patient works together with the family physician in order to ensure the wellness of a patient.

In 1967, the term medical home was made use of by the American Academy of Pediatrics in order to describe the concept of a single centralized source of care. Before completely making a shift towards the PCMH model, it is the duty of health care organizations to address the issue of space. As traditional primary care practices don't really have space for physicians to have private conversations or activities with the patients. With use of a fully integrated EMR, PCMHs are able to carry out team-based care for chronic conditions by permitting their members to visualize the patient right there and then. Although, for transitioning primary care practices, developing an EMR that implements the principles of PMCH has been hard.