Health Service and Functional Measures of Benefit of a Medical Home in Children with Autism

A medical home is a model of patient-centered, comprehensive care recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics for all children. The aims of this study were (1) to determine if the presence of a medical home is associated with improved health service outcomes of children with autism, and (2) to determine if the presence of a medical home is associated with improved key functional outcomes in children with autism.

This study used data from the 2016-2017 National Survey of Children's Health. We used a medical home construct of 14 survey questions as the main independent variable in logistic regression models estimating cross-sectional association, and also evaluated the interaction between medical home and demographic and household characteristics, including race, income, household composition, and autism severity in regression for outcomes.

Overall, the presence of a medical home was associated with increased parent reporting of shared health care decision-making, receipt of preventive pediatric care, and reduced frustration in accessing services. Some functional outcomes were also positively associated with the presences of a medical home in children with parent-reported mild autism symptoms; children who had a medical home visited the ED less often than children without a medical home. This did not persist for children with moderate or severe parent-rated autism. CONCLUSIONS FOR PRACTICE: Based on parent-reported, cross-sectional data from a large, nationally representative sample of families with a child with autism, the presence of a medical home was positively associated with some improved health services and functional outcomes.