The “Medical Home” was a term coined before its time. The American Academy of Pediatrics first introduced the medical home concept almost 45 years ago! Initially, the concept was to develop a central location to store and retain a child's medical records.

At the heart of U.S. health care reform is the development of collaborative health care practices where the patient, family, physician and a core team of trained professionals tackle medical care together. The goal is to provide health care that is comprehensive, accessible, effective, safe and of a higher quality. Patient-Centered Medical Home is today’s buzz phrase in both the private sector and the Military health care arenas. The hallmark is that the patient is at the center of an excellent primary care delivery model.

The Army has always been dedicated to providing high-quality health care. Meanwhile, the command and staff at Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center are enthusiastic about the changes in Primary Care and the implementation of PCMH. The values of Army Medicine include loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. In line with these ideals, the Institutes of Medicine referred to PCMH as “providing care that is respectful and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values”.

Taking care of military families provides unique challenges to some of the core concepts of PCMH such as sustained partnerships and continuity due to PCS moves and deployments, but DDEAMC is not intimidated by the hurdles. We are committed to the challenges; we are embracing our strengths such as the Electronic Medical Record that allows your records to be viewed at just about any military facility worldwide, to include in the theatre of operations!

The DDEAMC Family Medicine, Community Care, and Internal Medicine Clinics as well as the Troop Medical Clinic are making great strides to turn their clinics into your Medical Home. Most recently, The Primary Care Clinics, Family Medicine and Community Care Center, received level 3 recognition from the National Committee for Quality Assurance. Federal facilities such as your Military Treatment Facility must meet the same high standards as medical homes in the private sector. This was no easy feat and required many tedious hours of preparation, planning, and hard work by a myriad of staff members. This recognition signifies that your developing PCMH in its infancy is already setting and meeting high standards.

What is “patient-centered” care and what does PCMH mean for you, the patient? First of all, the IOM refers to patient-centeredness as health care that establishes a partnership among practitioners, patients, and their families to ensure that decisions respect patients’ wants, needs, and preferences; and that patients receive the education to make sound, informed decisions in their own care.

It means you will start to see a change in the way your health care is delivered. You will see more members of the health care team taking a dynamic interest in your care. At the same time, you will be asked to participate more, take an active part and accept responsibility for your care. We will listen more. You may receive more calls and reminders of preventative care and a nurse may take a vested interest in your disease management.

This team approach will free up your PCM to address new or changing concerns, issues, or complaints. You should find it easier to reach your PCM as a new secured messaging system is integrated this spring. This will not occur overnight, but within the next several months and over the course of the next couple of years you will see a recognizable team of health care professionals assisting you with your needs, less fragmentation of care, and more overall satisfaction with the care rendered.

In this day and age of a recession and burgeoning national health care costs, the Patient-Centered Medical Home innovation is expected to not only improve the quality of health care but through better prevention of disease and better maintenance of chronic disease, but alter the course of ballooning of health care spending. That is a plus-plus all around, and DDEAMC is making sure that its beneficiaries are at the receiving end of high-quality, patient-centered care.