Creating a Medical Home
Getting Started
Parent Partnership
Practice Improvement Methods:
Practice Assessment
Consumer Awareness
Practice Improvements
Acute Illness Managment
Preventive Care Managment
Chronic Condition Management
Transition Information
Community Resources
Medical Home Reimbursement
Quality Improvement
MedicaL Home Primer:
3rd Edition
Medical Home Information
for Families
Additional Resources
Getting Started:
Quality Improvement Strategies for Your Practice
The purpose of following sections of this web site is to offer busy primary care professional staff a menu of suggestions that can be incorporated into the practice to improve medical home quality health care that you provide to patients and families. These same suggestions will also help to direct you in achieving NCQA Level I Recognition status as a Patient Centered Medical Home and your efforts can also simultaneously satisfy Maintenance of Certification requirements for ABR recertification.
There is no particular order that you must follow in order to establish a medical home - you can choose any of the various activities or suggestions offered here to begin developing your medical home. Many suggested changes are simple to adopt and most are not costly. The 3rd edition of The Medical Home Primer for Pediatricians and Family Physicians is another resource for information and suggestions on establishing a medical home.
The following is a brief description of the many activities you will find here that you can begin to integrate into your practice to make medical home a stronger foundation of quality health care.
Parent Partnerships: This section emphasizes the importance of partnering with families and provides examples of how some practices have engaged families to improve quality of care.
Practice Assessment: Using validated assessment tools can help you determine "where you are" and assist you in defining "where you want to be". There are several questionnaire-type practice assessment tools that are described in this section. A practice assessment using such instruments provides a good baseline benchmark of where the practice is now and potential areas where further improvement can be made.
Consumer Awareness: Educating families about medical home is important. It sends the message that you care about quality health care and the partnership that they can bring to the practice. This section highlights strategies through brochures, posters and other opportunities to inform families about medical home.
Practice Improvements: Many examples are illustrated in this section that demonstrate practice improvements. These range from practical strategies to changes based on professional policies and best practice guidelines. Bulletin boards, internet access, screening procedures, pre-visit questionnaires, appointment scripts, care plans, cultural issues, and suggestions for using Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to bring about effective change are just a few of the examples.
Preventive Care Management: Quality improvement strategies described in this section include the use of visit preparation cards/scripts, bulletin boards and providing internet access and/or reference library to specifically address measures to prevent the spread of infection and disease. Policy statements on immunizations, safety, flu vaccines, obesity, and Bright Future Guidelines are also highlighted as guides to improving care.
Acute Illness Management:Quality improvement strategies described in this section include the use of visit preparation cards/scripts, bulletin boards and providing internet access and/or reference library to specifically address caring for children with common acute illnesses. Policy statements on bronchiolitis, febrile seizures, otitis media and urinary tract infections are also highlighted as guides to improving care.
Chronic Condition Management: The most challenging component of the Primary Care Medical Home Model is managing children with chronic health conditions. This section introduces you to various strategies that practices have used to identify CYSHCN and defines how such a registry is beneficial to the practice. This section also offers a list of practical strategies for improving care and includes information on common chronic health conditions plus critical information about newborn metabolic and hearing screening.
Transition Information: Assisting children and families to prepare and plan for adulthood and adult health care services is detailed in this section. Many useful tools are provided along with planning strategies and resources for additional information.
Community Resources: Knowing community resources is extremely important in providing good care to families. This section introduces you to the Life Span Database developed by the Arc of Illinois and other opportunities that will improve your practice’s awareness of community resources.
Medical Home Reimbursement: There are many potential financial challenges facing the implementation of the medical home in physician practices. Both coding for care and services provided to patients and negotiating with payers for the most appropriate contracts will be addressed in this section.
Quality Improvement: Once your practice is serious about developing quality improvement changes, you are ready to implement a more formal quality improvement process where families collaborate with staff to improve care delivery. Here is where you will also learn how to meet board recertification requirements involving quality improvement.
