Visit the Healthcare Industry Pipeline at www.hin.com - Download White Papers and Case Studies, Register for Webcasts!

Search Healthcare
Business at HIN:

Members Only
Click here for
subscriber access,
key word searches or
to download articles
of interest.

Audio Conferences

Bookstore
A complete selection of health management resources for healthcare executives. Your one-stop shop for the leading publications you need! Click here to browse our categories or conduct key word searches to find the products that best meets your needs!

HIPAA Desktop

Link your company's Web site or Intranet to HIN

Career Center
The Healthcare Intelligence Network Career Center brings together qualified healthcare management professionals seeking new career opportunities and healthcare organizations that are seeking to fill health management positions within their companies.

Earn gift certificates by referring your colleagues to the Healthcare Intelligence Network!

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Constructing Patient-Centered Medical Homes to Manage Chronic Conditions: The Nuts and Bolts of Program Design and Benefits

Manasquan, N.J., USA, February 16, 2007– The healthcare industry is not unfamiliar with the goal of “medical homes” – to provide accessible, continuous, comprehensive, family-centered, coordinated, compassionate and culturally effective healthcare – for all. But Congressional legislation passed in December adds financial weight to the idea of the patient-centered medical home by funding the Medicare Medical Home Demonstration. Authorized in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, this demonstration will pay a “care coordination fee” to participating physicians in eight states who manage patients with multiple chronic conditions.

To prepare healthcare organizations for participation and provide a framework for the construction of a medical home project, the Healthcare Intelligence Network (HIN) is sponsoring “Utilizing Medical Homes to Create a Patient-Centered Approach to Managing Chronic Conditions,” a live audio conference on March 7, 2007. For more information, please visit the HIN site.

During this 90-minute live interactive audio conference, industry experts Anne Hernandez, director of operations at APS Healthcare, Elizabeth Reardon, consultant with Commonwealth Medicine, and Dr. George Rust, a senior consultant with APS Healthcare and director of the Louis W. Sullivan National Center for Primary Care, will describe the challenges and benefits of building an effective medical home project and the effect these programs can have on patient outcomes, care continuity and healthcare costs. Participants in the audio conference will learn how to:

Recruit primary care physicians to participate in medical home projects;
Provide consumers with patient self-management tools and resources to make the most of their medical home;
Create a physician reimbursement and incentive structure to maximize medical home results;
Target and engage patients who would benefit from a medical home;
Support self-management in low-income populations; and
Develop relationships with community resources to address needs that can be met through community-based services.

In the 1960s, the American Academy of Pediatrics began advocating a medical home for every child, especially those with special healthcare needs, and was soon able to correlate improved patient outcomes, continuity of care and satisfaction with this effort. Thirty years later, both the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the American College of Physicians began championing medical homes for their populations.

In its 2004 report, “The Future of Family Medicine: A Collaborative Project of the Family Medicine Community,” the AAFP said that “steps must be taken to ensure every American has a personal medical home that serves as the focal point through which all individuals — regardless of age, sex, race, or socioeconomic status — receive a basket of acute, chronic, and preventive medical care services.”

“The medical home is not a physical structure but a conceptual model of care that has proven clinical and financial benefits for the healthcare community,” notes Melanie Matthews, HIN executive vice president and chief operating officer. But when her organization queried its online audience in late 2006 on its awareness of the medical home model, it found that more than half of responding healthcare organizations were either unfamiliar with or poorly informed about this concept. “A medical home for each American, with the cooperation of patients and community services, can raise the bar on provided health services and lower the number of 'medically homeless' requesting non-urgent care in emergency departments."

The audio conference will be held on March 7, 2007 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time and is geared to CEOs, medical directors, disease management directors, managers and coordinators, health plan executives, care management nurses, business development and strategic planning directors who play a role in the establishment of medical homes, Matthews said.

The 90-minute live audio conference includes a 30-minute question-and-answer period for participants. A recorded version on CD-ROM with a printed transcript will be available in late March, and the “On-Demand” audio conference re-broadcast can be accessed beginning March 9, 2007. To register and obtain additional conference details, please visit the HIN site.

About the Healthcare Intelligence Network – HIN is the premier advisory service for executives seeking high-quality strategic information on the business of healthcare. For more information, contact the Healthcare Intelligence Network, PO Box 1442, Wall Township, NJ 07719-1442, (888) 446-3530, fax (732) 292-3073, e-mail info@hin.com, or visit http://www.hin.com.

###