PCMH Overview

The Patient-Centered Medical Home

The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model is an approach to providing comprehensive primary care for children, adolescents, and adults. The PCMH is a health care setting that facilitates partnerships between patients and their personal physicians, and when appropriate, the patient's family.

This definition was laid out by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Osteopathic Association in the 2007 Joint Principles for the Patient Centered Medical Home. This defines critical principles within the PCMH model:

• access to a personal physician who leads the care team within a medical practice
• a whole-person orientation to providing patient care
• integrated and coordinated care
• focus on quality and safety

Through the medical home model, practices seek to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of the care they deliver, and to ensure that the activities within the practice are focused on meeting patient needs first. The PCMH model seeks to foster a relationship of trust between the care team and the patient, and to actively engage patients as partners in their health care.

The AAFP's PCMH resources give you step-by-step project plans and tools to:

• start emailing with patients, and get paid for it
• put practice finances in order
• put a clinical data system in place
  
• offer same-day appointments