13 specialty health care organizations endorse joint principles of PCMH

Announcement made at meeting of Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative

More than a dozen specialty health care organizations today joined the four major primary care physicians’ professional groups to endorse the seven-point Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH).

The PCMH offers the benefits of a personal physician with a whole-person orientation who accepts overall responsibility for the care of the patient and leads a team that provides enhanced access to care, improved coordinated and integrated care, and increased efforts to ensure safety and quality.

The Joint Principles describe the characteristics of a practice-based care model for providing comprehensive primary care for children, youth and adults in a health-care setting. The PCMH facilitates partnerships between individual patients and their personal physicians and – when appropriate – the patient’s family.

The announcement of the endorsements was made today at a Stakeholders Meeting of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC), a group dedicated to promoting the establishment of the Joint Principles. In addition to physicians and medical students, PCPCC’s membership consists of national employers and their associations, health care quality advocacy groups, academic centers, and consumer advocacy groups in supporting the PCMH.

The Joint Principles were released in March 2007 by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), which together represent some 333,000 physicians. The pediatricians, family physicians, internists and osteopathic physicians represented by the four organizations provide the vast majority of primary care services to children, adolescent and adult patients in the United States.

The PCPCC received reports today from its various Collaborative Centers on their work and their goals for future development. Included was a report on the continuing establishment of PCMH demonstration projects throughout the country in both private and public sectors.

The Joint Principles define key characteristics of the PCMH: