The Patient-Centered Health Home: Transformation to Excellence In Practice

摘要

The growing demand for quality health care in America requires transformation from a traditional medical model to a comprehensive, evidence-based, patient-centered model of care. In addition, health care must be cost effective, quality focused, and provides adequate access to all populations in all settings. A practice in southeast Texas endeavored to meet this challenge by intentionally transforming its multispecialty medical practice into a patient-centered health home. The health home practice model seeks to strengthen the patient-provider relationship through an effective, interactive, coordinated care, and a long-term healing relationship. Transition of practices to the health home model is best facilitated through staff training and with the use of a robust electronic medical record (EMR), auditing software, and a web-based interface to facilitate patient interaction. Established quality measures used as a benchmark to evaluate patient and provider adherence provide transparency that fosters a trusting relationship critical to effective health care. The author offers this view of the leadership role of the doctor of nursing practice (DNP) in the transformation of a multi-specialty practice to a patient-centered health home.