The United Health Foundation and drug manufacturer Pfizer have each awarded $50,000 unrestricted grants to the American College of Physicians. ACP officials say they will use the money to develop physician IT tools in support of the "medical home" model.
"The patient-centered medical home, in coordination with the other components of the healthcare delivery system, is the future of healthcare," said John Tooker, MD, ACP's executive vice president and CEO. "The grants from United Health Foundation and Pfizer will help ACP to continue designing and implementing practice-based resources - print, Web-based, CD/DVDs, audio, etc. - that help internists and their office teams assess potential quality gaps and strengthen their performance on nationally accepted quality measures."
The patient-centered medical home, where a personal physician leads a team of healthcare professionals at the practice level that collectively takes responsibility for treating and managing the care of a patient, includes using healthcare information technology, coordinating specialty and inpatient care, providing preventive services through health promotion and using disease management and prevention, health maintenance, behavioral health services, patient education and diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic illnesses in a team-based environment.
"We recognize that to facilitate the type of practice transformation consistent within this model of care, programs, products and services must be developed and employed in practice," said Michael S. Barr, MD, vice president of ACP's Department of Practice Advocacy and Improvement. "These grants allow us to develop resources for internal medicine practices."
ACP, along with the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Osteopathic Association, released "Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home" in March 2007. The set of seven principles describes the characteristics of a practice-based care model for providing comprehensive primary care for children, youths and adults in a healthcare setting. Several additional organizations have since endorsed the joint principles.