The Patient Centered Medical Home: Federal, State and Local Initiatives to Transform Primary Care. The First of an Occasional Series in Interprofessional Education and Care in the Patient-Centered Medical Home

The Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is rapidly emerging as one prototype for redesigning health care delivery, restructuring reimbursement, and reestablishing the critical value of primary care. The actual term “medical home” was introduced by the American Academy of Pediatrics, (AAP) in 1967, initially referring to a central location for archiving a child’s medical record. In 2002, the AAP expanded the medical home concept to include care characterized as accessible, continuous, comprehensive, patient-centered, coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective. In 2004, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) embraced the model in its Future of Family Medicine project report, and in 2006, the American College of Physicians (ACP) similarly issued a report endorsing the primary care medical home. Soon thereafter in 2007, the AAP, the AAFP, the ACP, and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA) wrote a document entitled the Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home