Milbank-Supported Report on the Patient-Centered Medical Home’s Impact on Cost and Quality

A new analysis released today by the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative with support from the Milbank Memorial Fund reports on an expanding body of research that shows that the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model is having a significant impact on reducing costs of care and unnecessary emergency department (ED) and hospital visits, as well as increasing the provision of preventive services and improving population health.

The report, The Patient-Centered Medical Home’s Impact on Cost & Quality: An Annual Update of the Evidence, 2012–2013, analyzed quantitative outcomes across twenty medical home evaluations from August 2012–2013, including thirteen peer-review and seven industry-generated evaluations. It reports on evaluations from a broad range of stakeholders and identifies the results by four outcome measure categories: cost and utilization, population health and prevention, access to care, and patient or clinician satisfaction.

These studies documented the following areas of improved performance resulting from PCMH implementation: reduction in the use of unnecessary or avoidable services, decrease in the cost of care, improvement in population health indicators, increase in preventive services, improvement in access to care, and improvement in patient satisfaction. The authors also call for more robust analyses regarding how PCMH’s function, transform, and improve outcomes for all patients and their families.

The report emphasizes that as private and public sector support for the PCMH continues to build, those developing the PCMH model need to learn from the expanding evidence and experience base, and develop a clear, foundational role of the PCMH in Accountable Care Organization and medical neighborhood models, as well as in payment reform efforts that reward quality and value.

The Milbank Memorial Fund provided financial and editorial assistance for the report. “There is strong evidence, much of it published in The Milbank Quarterly, that an abundance of high quality primary care is essential to improving the health of populations,” said Christopher Koller, President of the Fund. “It is not a question of whether to invest in more primary care, but how. This report is part of the Fund’s broader commitment to help build high quality primary care to improve population health. It is our hope that it will serve as a resource for all health care leaders to learn how the PCMH is improving the health care system at the patient and provider level, the practice level, and the health system level, and to provide an agenda for further improvement.”

Click here to download the report.