A few weeks ago I participated in a MEDecision webinar regarding the proliferation of the patient-centered medical home model (PCMH), which set a record for attendance/viewership. While I’d love to attribute that to my tremendous charisma and stellar presentation skills, the truth is that interest in the medical home and its potential to improve the quality and affordability of care has never been higher. And the fact that it is strongly endorsed in the recently-passed healthcare reform law only underscores its promise.

The medical home structure calls for each individual patient to be treated by a team of medical professionals under the direction of a primary care physician (PCP). This is the ultimate collaborative approach which, in order to reach optimum effectiveness, will require each care team member to have access to complete and up-to-date patient data. The PCP will need to know when the cardiologist has discontinued a beta blocker. The pulmonologist will need to know when the PCP orders a chest x-ray. All of the patient’s physicians will need to know when the patient has visited an ER or been hospitalized, and so on.

This all creates a tremendous opportunity for the health IT industry. Reporting and tracking outcomes for quality performance measures is essential for the medical home to succeed. Currently, these tasks are predominantly performed manually with paper-based medical records — a labor-intensive, time consuming and costly endeavor. Technology can expedite these processes by giving each care team member consistent, real-time access to clinical data. Imagine the PCP receiving an email when that beta blocker is discontinued or all of the team members being able to view the chest x-ray through a secure Web portal. Of course this will require open, standards-based systems that can transmit and receive data across native enterprise platforms and delivery mechanisms, essentially giving end-users access to information where they want it, when they want it and in whatever format best suits them. This is currently an area in which health IT needs to improve, although certain technologies already available enable this type of interactivity. It’s a good bet we’ll begin to see more as medical homes continue to grow.  

There is a lot of pressure on the medical home concept to succeed and, by association, on health IT to help make it happen. If we adopt the same spirit of collaboration and interoperability that the medical home itself requires, we’ll exceed expectations.

Vice President