Partnership Seeks To Bolster Patient-Centered Medical Homes in Calif.

The California Primary Care Association has partnered with Arcadia Solutions, a Massachusetts-based health information technology firm -- for an initiative that aims to boost development of patient-centered medical homes in the state, Healthcare IT News reports.

PCMHs utilize partnerships between patients and physicians and sometimes the patient's family. Health care services under PCMHs are facilitated by registries, IT, health data exchange and other means.

Details of Partnership

The goal of the program is to offer health systems an efficient plan for achieving recognition as a PCMH with the aid of Arcadia's cloud-based Health Home Accelerator Program. The initiative seeks to reduce recognition time for the health systems by 30%.

During the transformation process, CPCA officials said they aim to use primary care standards set by the National Committee for Quality Assurance. The standards describe criteria for how primary care practices can best organize patient care, work in teams and track patient care over time.

Comments

Carmela Castellano-Garcia -- CPCA's president and CEO -- said, "We have 150 providers committed to this program and intend to support all 900 of our member clinic sites to achieve recognition over the next five years."

She added, "It's important for us to help providers across California build and sustain successful medical homes."

Andrew Principe -- vice president of health care solutions at Arcadia Solutions -- said, "Our goal has been and will continue to be to support provider organizations in delivering the highest quality of care, improving quality and lowering total cost."

He noted, "Achieving practice transformation across the large, robust and diverse set of practices that make up the CPCA membership is a significant challenge" (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 7/9).