Tools to Gauge Progress During Patient-Centered Medical Home Transformation

To review tools designed to evaluate and improve the extent of patient-centered medical home (PCMH) implementation.

Literature search and review of tools to evaluate PCMH "medical homeness" and track progress toward practice transformation.

We conducted a literature search to identify tools designed for evaluation and quality improvement during the PCMH change process. We identified and reviewed the content of 5 publicly available PCMH survey tools used by an administrator or clinical lead to collect data at the practice level for evaluation and/or quality improvement during PCMH implementation. We assessed each tool's coverage of PCMH content, standards, and requirements.

We found that 3 tools (Patient-Centered Medical Home Assessment [PCMH-A], Primary Care Assessment Tool-Facility Edition, and Medical Home Care Coordination Survey-Healthcare Team [MHCCS-H]) are actionable for quality improvement. PCMH-A assesses the broadest array of practice capabilities and includes items pertaining to all National Committee for Quality Assurance PCMH standards. MHCCS-H was the only tool to contain items on comprehensiveness of care. There was variation in emphasis on main domains, with some content areas covered by only 1 tool.

There is currently little evidence on which PCMH tools are associated with improved quality outcomes, as relatively few longitudinal studies have been conducted. Of the 5 tools we reviewed, only PCMH-A and MHCCS-H impose a light administrative burden (less than 10 minutes to complete) and can identify specific actions to improve a given practice capability. Each tool is lacking in a particular content area: PCMH-A, for example, lacks items on comprehensiveness of care, whereas MHCCS-H lacks items addressing access to care.