A Patient-centered Medical Home is a model of care that encourages and strengthens the doctor-patient relationship by replacing fragmented, episodic and reactive disease focused care with organized, continuous and proactive care that is focused on preventing disease and preserving and restoring health. Each patient has a relationship with a primary care physician who leads a team with shared medical service duties, providing for the patient's entire spectrum of healthcare needs in a holistic manner while working with other medical providers in a coordinated and collaborative fashion.
The medical home is meant to result in a more "patient-centric" approach to care delivery that promotes high-quality, personalized and effective care. A medical home achieves these goals through enhanced access to medical providers and services. It adds more coordination of care marked by heightened communication and engagement between patients and doctors by taking advantage of the latest technology to prescribe, communicate, track test results, get medical support information and measure and reward performance for improving outcomes while containing and reducing costs.
