Patient-centered medical homes: The promise and the research agenda

Abstract

To address numerous problems with costly, unsafe, and inefficient fragmented care in the US health-care system, primary care reform has become a major area of interest. Proposed reforms have been centered around goals first articulated in the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), namely reducing medical errors, controlling cost, increasing patient-centered care, improving access, increasing the use of evidence-based care, including preventative services, and overall improving both the quality and the efficiency of the health-care delivery. A new model that is fair to say has gained the most attention by professional organizations, and many health-care stakeholders are the patient-centered medical home (PCMH).