Washington Four physician membership organizations today released Guidelines for Patient Centered Medical Home Demonstration Projects.
The four groups the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) represent nearly 350,000 physicians. The pediatrician, family physician, internist and osteopathic physician members of the four organizations provide the majority of primary care services to children, adolescents, and adult patients in the United States.
"The patient-centered medical home concept brings together the preventive and primary services that are the foundation of efficient, high quality health care," said Ted Epperly, M.D., president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "People who have a medical home receive whole-person care that is integrated and coordinated by a health care team. The patient-centered medical home also provides greater access to needed services through same day, extended hours and new options for communication, such as letting patients ask questions or check their lab results online."
"The medical home guidelines importance is to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison across projects and to avoid contamination by non-medical home projects, e.g. disease management programs," Epperly added.
David T. Tayloe, Jr., MD, FAAP, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said, "If projects are consistently and appropriately evaluated, it will indeed facilitate more meaningful interpretation and understanding of the lessons learned as we move forward to full implementation of medical home nationally."
The new set of guidelines has also been endorsed by the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC), a coalition of more than 400 major employers, consumer groups, patient quality organizations, health plans, labor unions, hospitals, physicians and many others wh
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| Contact: David Kinsman dkinsman@acponline.org 202-261-4554 American College of Physicians Source:Eurekalert |