PCMH on WIHI: Early results

Madge Kaplan writes:

The next WIHI broadcast — The Patient-Centered Medical Home: Early Results, Tough Scrutiny — will take place on Thursday, May 22, from 2 to 3 PM ET, and I hope you'll tune in. This show is a collaboration with the Journal of the American Medical Association called JAMA on WIHI: An Online Audio Forum on Quality.

Our guests will include:

• Mark Friedberg, MD, MPP, Natural Scientist, Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School
• Christine A. Sinsky, MD, Medical Associates Clinic and Health Plans (Dubuque, Iowa); Director, American Board of Internal Medicine
• Don Goldmann, MD, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, Institute for Healthcare Improvement
• Richard Barron, MD, President and CEO, American Board of Internal Medicine, ABIM Foundation

The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is getting a hard look this year. In a study published in JAMA in February, the largest of its kind, researchers followed 32 primary care practices certified as PCMHs over a three-year period, and were unable to find any impact on overall health care costs or patients’ utilization of health care services, including emergency departments. To put it mildly, this was not welcomed news by the health care improvement community — especially those who are looking to PCMHs as one jewel in the crown of a redesigned primary care system that offers patients more integrated, coordinated, cost-effective care. Headlines such as “Medical Homes Haven’t Saved Money or Substantially Improved Care” and “Medical Homes May Not Be The Answer” suggested just the opposite.
 

This is not the entire story. The state of Minnesota recently issued a report on its success with PCMHs. And, where focused work is underway elsewhere, the uptake of process improvements is encouraging. But the study in JAMA has functioned as a sort of wake-up call, which many experts, including champions of PCMHs, believe is timely and beneficial. Dr. Goldman has offered some perspective on the study in a blog post and in a short video in anticipation of the WIHI broadcast where we'll look at the research, the strengths and weaknesses of the study design, and what lessons can be gleaned for transforming primary care going forward. Please join us for the May 22 WIHI: The Patient-Centered Medical Home: Early Results, Tough Scrutiny, produced in collaboration with JAMA.

WIHI Host Madge Kaplan and co-host Dr. Goldmann, IHI’s Chief Medical and Scientific Officer, have put together a panel to walk us through the issues, starting with the lead author of the JAMA study on PCMHs in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Mark Friedberg. He’ll explain how the study was conducted, its key findings, and its recommendations. Dr. Richard Barron will bring the perspective of ABIM to this discussion, plus his long experience improving outpatient care. This includes his leadership of a physician practice in Philadelphia that was one of the first in the country to successfully adopt electronic health records and achieve Level 3 PCMH recognition from the National Committee for Quality Assurance or NCQA. Dr. Christine Sinsky has a broad view of the issues, too, and is also deeply engaged in day-to-day clinical practice in Iowa. She contends that gaining PCMH certification is just one part of a multi-dimensional effort to transform practices to provide high-quality, cost-effective care; it is not an end in itself.

All the guests, along with Madge Kaplan and Don Goldmann, very much want to know your successes and challenges with PCMHs and what sort of measures and evaluations of this work are needed going forward. Bring your teams and your energy to the May 22 WIHI!

I hope you'll join us! You can enroll for the broadcast here.