Illinois medical home project: pilot intervention and evaluation

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Primary Care
• Healthcare Quality Improvement
• Children with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN)

Background:

• A medical home model ensures accessible, continuous, comprehensive, family-centered, coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective care.
• Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) often require coordinated and enhanced primary care services.
• Quality improvement (QI) initiatives are crucial for optimizing healthcare delivery in pediatric settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement and evaluate a pilot pediatric practice-directed medical home quality improvement (QI) project.
• To enhance primary care services for Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN).
• To assess the feasibility and impact of QI strategies on medical home practices.

Main Methods:

• Six pediatric practices participated in a QI project focused on the medical home model.
• Practices received training, QI team development, facilitation, and mini-grants for project implementation.
• Practice-level and parent-level evaluations were conducted pre- and post-intervention.

Main Results:

• The medical home QI intervention was well-received by participating practices.
• Practice-level evaluations indicated areas for improvement, particularly in family-centered care and QI activities.
• Low response rates for family-level evaluations limited outcome interpretation, though initial respondents showed some positive trends.

Conclusions:

• Implementing QI teams and practice education is a feasible approach to improving outcomes for CYSHCN.
• Enhancing family-centered care and QI practices are key targets for medical home development.
• Modifications to evaluation strategies are necessary to improve response rates and fully capture family-level outcomes.