Benefits of Implementing the Primary Care Medical Home

The medical home is an approach to delivering and organizing primary care that helps achieve the goals of the Triple Aim: improve the experience of care, improve the health of populations, and reduce per capita costs of health care. A medical home achieves these goals by adopting new technologies, care delivery methods and relationships with patients and their families that encourage primary care to be patient-centered, comprehensive, coordinated, accessible and committed to quality and safety.

PCPCC’s  2012 review of 46 medical home initiatives throughout the U.S.  – Benefits of Implementing the Primary Care Patient-Centered Medical Home: A Review of Cost & Quality Results – provides significant evidence that the medical home model reduces overall costs and spending by reducing inpatient visits, emergency department use, hospital readmissions, and other factors. The paper highlights outcomes from peer-reviewed research and industry-reported outcomes.

Through this research we have identified three broad conclusions about PCMH outcomes:

• As medical home implementation increases, the Triple Aim outcomes of better health, better care and lower costs are being achieved.
• Medical home expansion has reached the tipping point with broad private and public sector support.
• Investment in the medical home offers both short- and long-term savings for patients, employers, health plans and policymakers.