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Today – February 26, 2014 – the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the results of a pilot study (note: click the link, and then click the JAMA Reader link button on the right side of the page for the full text) of a volunteer group of Pennsylvania primary care practices. The pilot was designed by a coalition of payers, clinicians, and healthcare delivery systems in the southeastern region of Pennsylvania, and its purpose was to measure the impact, if any, of the patient centered medical home (PCMH) model on outcome/quality improvement and cost containment.

I’ll cut to the chase: the first paragraph of the conclusion states

A multi-payer medical home pilot […] was associated with limited improvements in quality and was not associated with reductions in utilization of hospital, emergency department, or ambulatory care services or total costs over three years. These findings suggest that medical home interventions may need further refinement.

Further along in the conclusion section, the article refers to the patient-centered medical home as “professional associations, payers, policy makers, and other stakeholders, [in a] a team-based model of primary care practice intended to improve the quality, efficiency, and patient experience of care.” The only trouble with this definition of PCMH is that the patient is not really a part of the team – patients are once again assigned acted-upon rather than actor-in status in the healthcare transaction.

In a highly-readable post on his blog, Dr. John Mandrola boils his observation of the JAMA report down to “health cometh not from healthcare.”

Until the leaders in clinical practice – JAMA and all others in the position to ignite and guide the conversation about medical care, its purpose, and its future – fully recognize the need for a participatory model that starts and ends with the patient, we’ll be reading study reports like the one in today’s JAMA.

 

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