HealthTeamWorks at the National Medical Home Summit

HealthTeamWorks^® attended the 8th Annual National Medical Home Summit last week in Washington, D.C. Co-hosted by the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, the conference offered a look at how advanced medical homes fit into new value-based care delivery models and spurred discussion around how it all works, what we are learning from research, what outcomes are being seen, and what issues and challenges lie ahead. One panel presentation by Dr. Ben Miller, PsyD, from the University of Colorado School of Medicine touched on the urgent need to integrate behavioral health services into primary care practice to address the alarming increase in suicides across pediatric, adult, and senior populations.

Bert Miuccio, CEO of HealthTeamWorks^®, noted a theme throughout the conference that quality improvement results have been consistently strong but it’s too early in the pilots to determine the long-range total cost-of-care impact. “The total cost of care reduction outcomes of PCMH pilots to date are generally resulting in cost reductions to Medicare and Medicaid that are slightly less than the capitated payment incentives that CMS is paying under those contracts to practices participating in the pilots,” said Bert. “The moral of the story is this…it’s still too early to fully evaluate pilot impact.”