Essay Sample on Sustaining Patient-Centered Medical Homes: Strategies, Innovations, and Policy Impacts

Introduction

Medical Home’s sustainability requires many adjustments, including new workflows, and systems that would be utilized to improve patient access and manage the health of the entire patient population. More so, there is a need for staff to perform new roles and serve the patients effectively. Therefore, payers should make sufficient upfront investment to sustain the patient-centered medical home.

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For the patient-centered medical home to be sustainable, there should be the availability of funds, value for money, and goodwill to implement. The US has the capability of funding it through rewarding the doctors who provide medical home services. The patient-centered medical home is viable because it offers the best medical services as closely as possible to the patient. It has also received goodwill across the country. For instance, former President Obama's healthcare reform plan has helped sustain the program by strengthening the primary care workforce with loan assistance, expanded residency training findings, and improved payments. In 2008, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recommended an increase in part-B payments by Congress to primary care physicians and expanded the project.

Despite financial challenges, the project would be sustainable in the future. The piloting experienced difficulties because of the lack of knowledge in communities and inadequate financial resources. According to the AAFP leader, the project would be sustainable if family physicians moved their services toward becoming actual medical homes (Backer, 2009). If family physicians build confidence and prepare adequately, the project will be sustainable in the long run.

Improved Quality of Services

The patient-centered medical should address all the needs of the patients. It has to offer medical care access to the patient population, care coordination, and provide the overall best patient experience. Also, it should improve care quality because patients can always get the required treatments when they need them. More so, the care they provide is personalized, coordinated, and comprehensive as per the patient's need. It also reduces expenses on hospitalization visits, complications, and emergency rooms, especially for complex chronic conditions. For both the payers and patients, the program has to offer improved value by lowering the medication cost and increasing care quality. Research has also indicated that reduced downstream costs like emergency department visits plus enhanced insurance payments are shared savings.

Patient-centered medical homes have to focus on providing the communities with the necessary skills to construct interventions, monitor themselves, and formulate effective health policies. Also, patients should get treatment in a sensitive and supportive environment by emphasizing individual preferences and values.

Innovation to Improve Operational Efficiency and Functionality

The patient-centered medical home should enhance overall quality, improve care coordination, and reduce costs. The team involved in the implementation includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and social workers. Various innovations are, therefore, necessary to aid the success of the project.

One of the innovations is TranfoMed’s Medical Home IQ assessment (Backer, 2009). The resource would help the physicians to assess performance by measuring it against an eight-core set of competencies. The recommendations it offers help in improving their scores based on the quality of their services.

The lack of understanding of the community's project is one of the main challenges experienced during the pilot stage. Therefore, the team should develop interpersonal skills like emotional management and empathy. This move would create an interpersonal connection that is informative and supportive between patient and caregiver. Interpersonal skills can also help health planners develop partnerships required to engage the communities.

“Smart Leadership that demonstrates a strong vision for the future; accountability of the leadership to “lead” the organization; Collaborative leadership

The federal and states governments should provide support for a patient-centered medical home project. For instance, President Obama’s health reform strengthened the primary care workforce. More so, congress also supported the project. The project requires many financial resources, coordination, creating awareness within the community, and oversight.

Therefore, for the Patient-centered medical home to be sustainable in the long run, it requires smart leadership that demonstrates a vision for the future, leadership accountability, and collaboration. All funds allocated to the program must be utilized effectively to maintain all operations. Also, there must be coordination from the community level to the Department of Health. The professionals should also collaborate with officials and colleagues to offer quality and timely services to the communities. The project experiences multiple challenges because it requires a visionary mindset and management skills to sustain it. Therefore, wise leadership is essential to maintain the program.

Access and Responsibility for Addressing Health Disparities

Access and responsibility for addressing health disparities should be the primary focus of the healthcare setting. The patient-centered medical home's main aim was to ensure every person within the community had access to quality and timely health services from the government. Many commentators have argued that the community should be the unit of analysis for intervention for healthcare intervention. Failure to consider communities as units of research leads to a loss of opportunities to design innovative and practical approaches. Many people usually fail to access the best healthcare services because of cost and accessibility. However, the patient-centered medical home makes the services accessible because healthcare professionals treat people from their families upon request.

Therefore, the introduction of a medical home should be prioritized because it enhances access to quality services. The project should be embraced, funded, and managed efficiently to ensure that it is sustainable in the future. More doctors, nurses, and pharmacists should be hired and introduced to the program to ensure that each community is served adequately. More so, a shortage of equipment and medicine has to be addressed so that healthcare professionals have adequate supplies to meet the patient population's needs.

Acknowledgment of the Impact of Health Care Reform and Its Effect on the Organization

The healthcare reform by former president Barrack Obama has played a critical role in strengthening the primary care workforce through improved payment, expanded residency, and loan assistance. Another meaningful healthcare reform is the Affordable Care Act. It implemented comprehensive reforms that were meant to improve the affordability, accessibility, and quality of healthcare.

The medical home is the main beneficiary of such healthcare reforms. For instance, Obama's medical reforms saw professionals get benefits that motivated them in their line of duty and expanded healthcare service provision to communities. The patient-centered medical home program implementation succeeded, to some extent, because of such reform because health professionals required more allowances to facilitate the project.

Affordable Care Act also introduced health reforms which impacted Medical Homes to a great extent. The medical home's focus was to provide quality, affordable, and quality and timely services to the communities. The Affordable Care Act was the first law that created the idea of a patient-centered medical home. Therefore, the introduction and progress of medical homes rely primarily on medical reforms introduced in the country.

Population Health and the Importance of Using Sound Data to Formulate Overall Strategy

As an inter-disciplined field, population health focuses on analyzing the health outcomes of a large population to combat medical problems on a vast scale. The use of population data is a useful tool in treating widespread health complications. The population health data is also essential in the implementation of community-wide health initiatives to promote good health.

The population health data incorporates groups like disabled persons, employees, students of a given university, people living with a specific disease, and military veterans. The population data can also be in gender, occupation, race, income, and education.

The focus of patient-centered medical homes can easily be fulfilled through the use of population health data. The community data has to be collected, sorted, and kept to ascertain the number of people requiring extra medical attention within the community. For example, the data on people living with disabilities or those with HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, and other diseases should be spotted to receive necessary care. The best strategy for approaching such people can be formulated and implemented if their data is available. The only way to ensure all people receive medical attention on a timely basis is to collect and keep their health data. Therefore, a community-based healthcare program can succeed if population health data is collected and updated regularly.

Reference

Backer, L.A. (2009). Building the case for the patient-centered. MedicalHomeCaseStudy.