The Future of Primary Care: The Medical Home

It seems simple enough: give patients and physicians more time together, improve access, support them with great information, and focus on prevention, wellness and chronic needs. It's not radical, but it's radically changing how patients and physicians feel about primary care.

What does it all mean? A medical home uses a collaborative, team approach to deliver care tailored to a patient's needs. Using all the available tools, including electronic medical records, and "virtual" visits, patients have better access and better control over their care. And physicians have more time to provide that care.

That’s why we spent the past two years testing this model for primary care, called medical home, at Factoria Medical Center, one of Group Health's 26 owned and operated medical facilities. Trends showed faster improvement on composite quality scores; improvements in all measures of patient experience; greater work satisfaction for our staff; fewer avoidable hospitalizations, consulting nurse calls, and emergency/urgent care visits; more secure messaging and telephone outreach and less face-to-face primary care visits.

Those preliminary results prompted us to implement the medical home model in all our clinics. We are excited about the progress we’re making: We've reduced panel sizes, hired several new physicians, and strengthened team collaboration. And we're making a buzz. Chief Medical Executive Michael Soman, MD, was invited to a White House Roundtable discussion on Primary Care, where he discussed our Medical Home and its impact on care delivery.