Abstract
The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) represents, quite simply, good primary care that has been systematized to be shared among highly functional teams. This seems at odds with classic views of primary care, in which one provider shouldered the responsibilities for a panel of patients, with specific tasks delegated to ancillary staff. PCMH allows the development of a team, featuring dynamic distributed leadership by different team members, with common goals in providing and improving clinical care. It also requires networks of providers and systems of care designed to maximize patient-centered, proactive, and appropriately responsive care. As anyone who has embarked upon the PCMH journey knows, this transformation can be very difficult. We suggest this challenge is due to the complex adaptive system in which it must be implemented and evaluated. In this chapter, we discuss the case for implementing a PCMH transformation. This lays the groundwork for the argument that such a transformation is one of the most important goals for those interested in improving healthcare. We argue that the preponderance of evidence supports that highly functioning primary care delivery is the foundation for a solid healthcare system and that the PCMH model offers much to maximize efficiency, quality patient care, and staff satisfaction. In this chapter, we will review a brief history of primary care, why we need to maintain the “primacy of primary care” in our system, and how the PCMH model can help to bridge the gap between desired and delivered practice in the USA.
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Smith, C.S., Gerrish, W.G., Weppner, W.G. (2015). The Argument for the Patient-Centered Medical Home: Replicating Good Primary Care. In: Interprofessional Education in Patient-Centered Medical Homes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20158-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20158-0_2
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