White Paper: Becoming A Medical Home

Transforming your practice into a medical home won't require a down payment on new space – nor a remodel of the reception area. The "medical home", originally defined by the American Academy of Pediatrics in the 1960s, is the collective support, communication, coordination and infrastructure a medical practice provides to its patients.

Although the medical home concept has been around for many years, its status has surged recently. The concept's leap in popularity came in 2007 when Medicare began a medical home demonstration project. Private insurance companies soon followed by introducing programs of extra payments to medical practices that demonstrated that they served as a medical home for their patients. These extra payments now come in various forms: a "per member, per month" management fee for patients enrolled in the medical home; a reimbursement bonus per fee-for-service encounter; or entry into the top tiers of the company's provider networks.