Care Coordination
The medical home concept is part of patient/family-centered care and the team-based health care delivery model. Medical Home emphasizes comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients with the goal of obtaining maximized health outcomes. The provision of medical homes may allow better access to health care, increase satisfaction with care, and improve health.
Care coordination is an essential component of the medical home. Care coordination requires additional resources such as health information technology, and appropriately trained staff to provide coordinated care through team-based models. Additionally, payment models that compensate providers for their effort devoted to care coordination activities and patient/family-centered care management that fall outside the face-face patient encounter may help encourage coordination.
