Health Care Homes (aka Medical Homes)
A "health care home," also called a "medical home," is an approach to primary care in which primary care providers, families and patients work in partnership to improve health outcomes and quality of life for individuals with chronic health conditions and disabilities.
The development of health care homes in Minnesota is part of the ground-breaking health reform legislation passed in May 2008. The legislation includes payment to primary care providers for partnering with patients and families to provide coordination of care.
- Find a certified health care home.
- Health care providers may apply to become certified as a health care home.
What's new?
- The Health Care Homes Learning Collaborative will be hosting monthly webinar series geared toward providing opportunities for certified Health Care Homes and clinics interested in certification to learn about innovative and best practices in health care. The first webinar will focus on integrating substance misuse screening and the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) model into primary care.
Integrating Substance Misuse Screening and Intervention into Primary Care
Date: Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Time: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM, Central Daylight Time
For more information and to register, please visit the Monthly Webinar Series webpage.
- Health Care Homes Announces 13 newly certified clinics. There are now 257 certified HCH. The following clinics have been certified:
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Litchfield East
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Litchfield West
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Hancock
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Benson
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Granite Falls
Affiliated Community Medical Center – New London
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Marshall Main
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Redwood Falls
Affiliated Community Medical Center – Willmar
Olmsted Medical Center – Chatfield
Olmsted Medical Center – Pine Island
Olmsted Medical Center – Spring Valley
Olmsted Medical Center – Stewartville
The Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (ICSI) and the Minnesota Department of Health are collaborating to help medical groups enhance their current screening efforts around these three cancers. This is a great opportunity for your clinic to plan and implement one or more cancer prevention screening processes into your system. Participating in this learning collaborative will help you meet the Health Care Home certification requirement.
The collaborative will start with a kick off webinar in June, 2013 and be followed by face to face sessions and calls through June of 2014. To register for this Learning Collaborative visit www.ICSI.org.
The National Institute on Aging (NIA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Administration for Community Living (ACL) are collaborating to host a webinar series with the goals of 1) improving coordination of federal resources available to assist people with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias and their family caregivers and 2) encouraging awareness of research participation opportunities. Topics include:
- People with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities and Dementia
- Diverse Populations, Health Disparities and Dementia
- Younger Onset Dementia
- Advanced Stage Dementia and Palliative Care
Please refer to the ACL website for more information. http://www.acl.gov/NewsRoom/NewsInfo/2013/2013_05_08c.aspx
- New Care Coordination Measure Pilot
The HCH in collaboration with Minnesota Community Measurement (MNCM) is implementing two new care coordination measure specifications in pilot phase. The measures are intended for quality improvement, benchmarking for recertification and program evaluation purposes of health care home clinics. In order to have a representative and informative pilot, certified health care homes are encouraged to participate and this grant is established to cover the clinic’s identified costs of the pilot.
- Changes to Minnesota Community Measurement Submission requirements!
We are announcing that Certified HCH’s submitting data to MN Community Measurement will no longer need to submit the additional health care home data fields for all measures for HCH Certification. The additional HCH data fields have been removed from the measure specifications and will no longer be collected by MNCM. The data elements were originally recommended by the HCH Performance Measurement Workgroup to assist in the evaluations of HCH’s and benchmarking, however, there has been low uptake in the ability to report these fields so it has been decided these data fields will not be used in the HCH benchmarking or evaluation report due to the legislature in 2013. Please note that discontinuing the tiering only affects the submission of these data elements for the HCH quality measures and not the HCH payment methodology.
This decision is implemented immediately and the MNCM data collection guides have already been updated to reflect this. If you have questions about the technical aspects please contact Nathan Hunkins at MN Community Measurement, 612-454-4821.
- The HealthPartners Research Foundation has received a US Department of Health & Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant to study the transformation of traditional primary care clinics in Minnesota to “health care homes,” also known as “medical homes.”
Leif Solberg, MD, senior investigator and director for care improvement research at the HealthPartners Research Foundation, received the $596,000 grant to conduct a two-year study, “Evaluating Statewide Transformation of Primary Care to Medical Homes.”
The Minnesota Departments of Health and Human Services will work with Solberg. With Minnesota Community Measurement and other partners, they will test whether clinics that have transformed their practice by implementing a health care home also see better quality of care of patients with diabetes or heart disease. They will then interview and survey successful clinics to identify key changes most important for transformation.
The study will also compare more and less transformed clinics in health care costs and utilization and patient and clinician/staff satisfaction.
