It occurred to me that my recent blog really didn’t define a Medical Home. In short: Each patient has a personal physician that leads a team at the practice level who takes responsibility for the ongoing care of a patient. The relationship includes responsibility for all stages of care (primary, specialty, preventive, end of life, etc.) with a whole person orientation. Care is integrated and coordinated with an emphasis on quality, safety and outcome.

Here are some bullet points describing the interface between the Medical Home and Information Technology.

• Integrated and Coordinated Care
  • Registries
  • PHR, EMR
  • Health Information Exchange connecting primary care, specialty care, hospitals, home health, nursing homes…
• Quality and Safety
  • Evidence-based medicine and clinical decision support
  • Performance measurement and improvement
  • Enhanced patient communication
• Payment
  • Support for IT adoption
  • Recognition of communication such as secure e-mail
  • Recognition value of remote monitoring of clinical data using technology
  • Recognition of measurable and continuous quality improvements

You will recognize many shared IT objectives between the challenges you face as a CIO and implementation of this practice model. I think it wise to keep the Medical Home model in mind when creating a vision and strategy for your institutions EMR.