Medical Homes May Be the Healthcare of the Future

The Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) is aiming to improve the state of healthcare in America by proposing to use a set of clinical and operational guidelines in order to make primary care physicians a patient-centered medical home, if they wish to be.  The PCPCC is a collection of national business leaders, policymakers, and 330,000 primary care physicians. These guidelines were announced at a national healthcare summit sponsored by the PCPCC.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance alongside the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, and the American Osteopathic Association made the guidelines that could enable a physician to be declared a medical home. The first pilots of this program will begin in January 2008 and those involved hope it will change the way America thinks of healthcare.

The difference between a medical home and a doctor's office is that a medical home places the emphasis on a patient's health, not just on curing them when they are sick. In fact, a medical home concentrates on personalized primary and preventative care. A patient would find that in a medical home, technology is up to date and that the use of health information technology that focuses on patient conveniences is abundant. Such technology can include same day scheduling, email communication, and electronic health records. The make up of a medical home is a team of professional and this type of approach allows a doctor to spend more time with a patient to allow more individualized care plans. This kind of systematic approach to healthcare has been proven to improve health care quality and the level of patient satisfaction.