NP Medical Home/Health Care Homes
It has been a very busy fall for ECFC. In addition to general patient care and all the day-to-day administrative issues, we are faced with another task. The state of MN has mandated that all recipients of state-sponsored health insurance have access to and are members of a state-certified Health Care Home.
Eagan Child and Family Care is one of 15 recipients of a grant to attend the Institute or Family Centered Care Intensive Training session at the end of this month, in preparation for meeting the requirements to become a certified health care home. Our plan is to meet these requirements over the next 90 days. We are fortunate to have a DNP student who is helping us with this process as part of her doctoral project.
There are a number of agencies that offer some type of Medical Home or Health Care Home certification. Along with the State of MN, The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), The Joint Commission Accreditation on Ambulatory Care and Hospitals, Bureau of Primary Care/Health Resources and Service Administration, Medicare CMS Demonstration, and other state agencies. Some of these groups have fees associated with the process.
Criteria for certification for Health Care Home/Medical Home are slightly different, depending on which agency is involved, but there the basic requirements to measure performance are in these critical areas: patient access and communication, patient tracking and registry functions, care management, patient self-management, test tracking, referral tracking, performance reporting and improvement measures, electronic prescribing and advanced electronic communications. Within each of these areas there are components that are considered key and some that are highly recommended. Minnesota is developing a process to reimburse providers for care coordination services in an effort to defray the actual and potential costs of implementing and sustaining health care home services.
Care coordination, collaboration, patient centered care...these are the foundations of NP practice. I know the way we deliver our services is not going to change, more so the way we track and monitor the delivery of those services. I will keep you posted on our progress!