The Patient Centered Medical Home
In the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH), "the personal physician is responsible for providing for all the patient’s health care needs or taking responsibility for appropriately arranging care with other qualified professionals. This includes care for all stages of life; acute care; chronic care; preventive services; and end of life care." (Source: Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative)
Providing the functions of a Medical Home can result in better health for your patients It can also improve your practice's revenue in two ways:
- You may qualify for payments from employers, health plans, and other payers.
- Additional income from providing patient services. After all, if the patients do not get the examinations they ought to have, not only will their health (in the aggregate) suffer, but you won't get the income from providing those exams.
Taking responsibility for all the patient's health care needs is a tall order. VersaForm is committed to providing information technology to help the physician achieve it. The VersaForm Electronic Medical Record (EHR) and Patient Registry contain tools that provide this help in specific ways:
- Alerts remind the physician or other provider when the patient has a condition that may require attention. The practice can set up conditions for the alert that define when it will appear. The alert itself can provide a checklist for that condition; again these are set up by the practice, so they can follow published guidelines and also can be modified by the physician.
- Visit Plans provide background on the patient's medical condition and history; they also provide any applicable alerts in printed form, so they can be used when a computer system isn't available at the point of care.
- Health Management Reports, again definable by the practice, can identify which patients need visits or follow-up. It is hard to imagine how a practice can take the responsibility envisioned in the PCMH without such a tool.
- Patient Outreach Letters can be set up to print (or email) automatically, either depending on a schedule or on conditions such as lab test results.
