Kim Eason on the Benefits of Patient-Centered Medical Homes

Patient-centered medical homes are valuable because they allow insurers to look at the cost of all of the patient’s treatments, services, and physicians throughout the continuum of care, explained Kim Eason, manager at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of NJ.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How can innovative programs like patient-centered medical homes improve cancer outcomes and care quality, while managing costs?

So the patient-centered medical home looks at the total cost of care and all the types of services and physicians that a patient may be seeing. Horizon was one of the first in the state of New Jersey, we partnered with the New Jersey American Academy of Family Physicians and 8 primary practices under our healthcare innovations division about 6 years ago to look at a patient-centered medical home model.

Since we were on the forefront with that, we understand that putting those integral pieces together and then looking at the cost along the continuum of care allows for that patient-centered medical home, or patient-centered medical neighborhood, to work. Because you’re bringing everyone together, and you’re looking at all the services that the patient’s having, and all of the physicians that can impact them as they’re going through their care treatments and along that care continuum.