The Patient-Centered Medical Home in Practice

For some medical practices, particularly those in rural areas, the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is a pipe dream. A progressive concept, PCMHs are designed to bring teams of clinicians together who  organize care around patients and track outcomes over time. This model is easier said than done, however, and poses some formidable operational and technical challenges for providers who comfortably operate in the fee-for-service reimbursement environment or are just coming up to speed with electronic health records (EHRs) and other health information technologies (HIT). But for every challenge there is an opportunity, a concept that leaders from Otsego Memorial Hospital (OMH), a fully accredited 46-bed acute care facility and 34-bed long-term care facility in Gaylord, Mich., know all too well. 

As a progressive, independent acute care facility, OMH and its affiliated providers deliver quality care and personal service to thousands of patients in north-central Michigan. Looking to improve patient communication and become more sophisticated care managers, two hallmarks of a PCMH, OMH’s 46-provider multispecialty medical group, which includes three rural health clinics, is successfully participating in the nation’s largest medical home project.

Demonstrating Cost Controls, Improved Quality

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is a driving force behind the PCMH model, creating standards and guidelines to facilitate partnerships between individual patients and their personal physicians. However, health plans such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) are also embracing the PCMH concept as a way to lower costs for covering at-risk populations. In 2009, BCBSM launched a “value partnerships” PCMH model for providers throughout the state. The program was quickly embraced by OMH leadership, which had already implemented many PCMH features throughout its organization. They were motivated by the exciting prospect of fundamentally impacting care through even greater enhancements to physician practice patterns. The organization was also interested in financial incentives as it successfully followed the program’s four key principles:

• Physicians will deliver higher-quality, lower-cost care when utilizing tools that promote patient engagement as well as a team approach for managing their health.
• Patients who have around-the-clock access to their primary care physician are more likely to receive the care they need in the appropriate setting, and well as a result decrease their use of the emergency department for non-emergency conditions.
• Primary care physicians who effectively manage their patients' chronic conditions may help prevent hospitalizations, thus improving care outcomes and decreasing costs.
• Physicians can more effectively manage their patients' health through the use of secure, electronic patient registries and performance reporting tools. 

Nearly 7,000 physicians throughout Michigan are actively building patient-centered medical home infrastructure. PCMH-designated physicians earn an enhanced fee for office visits, to compensate them for the extra time and effort required to practice as a medical home. More than 3,000 of these physicians in 994 practices throughout the state—including those affiliated with OMH’s medical group—have been designated as PCMHs based on their progress in implementing capabilities and demonstrating high performance on quality and use measures—competencies that are only achieved though the successful utilization of an EHR. 

Technology Drives Progress

A true PCMH benefits from significant technology investment. The real-time collaborative nature of the model, coupled with the need to accurately measure results, means that organizations need to embrace HIT to be successful. 

OMH is no stranger to enabling technologies. Having utilized an EHR solution (from Tampa, Fla.-based Vitera Healthcare Solutions) for over six years, the organization is becoming an ever-more sophisticated user of its integrated system-enabled analytics for monitoring and reporting outcomes, which is one of the hallmarks of its PCMH. For example, while many other providers require a separate module for their clinical technology to comply with disease reporting requirements, OMH achieves registry needs within its existing EHR.

OMH is also ramping up its use of a patient portal. In place since 2010, the portal is a bi-directional communications medium that allows providers and patients to interact in a secure environment. It gives individuals the option to electronically access their physicians’ offices 24/7 to request a prescription refill, pose non-emergent medical question or request an appointment, for example. The secure messages are fielded by office staff who respond to the patient either electronically or by phone, according to the individual’s preference.