Medical Home Fails to Prove Quality, Cost Claims

Although highly touted, the patient-centered medical home model failed to lower use of services or total costs and produced little quality improvement over three years, research in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has found.

However, a number of factors may account for the findings and suggest that medical homes may need “further refinement.”

The research tracked the southeastern Pennsylvania Chronic Care Initiative in one of the first, largest and longest-running multi-payer trials of the team-based model from 2008 to 2011. The pilot included 32 primary care practices with recognition from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and six health plans, with two commercial and two Medicaid plans supplying claims data.

Medical home efforts have encouraged primary providers to invest in patient registries, use electronic medication prescribing, enhanced access options and other structural changes aimed at improving patient care in exchange for bonuses.

Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/NCReps

Source: Healthcare Payer News