Using HIT

One of the key elements of the patient centered medical home is that information technology (IT) is utilized appropriately and in a meaningful way to support optimal patient care, performance measurement, patient education, and enhanced communication. Health IT can play a significant role in providing a foundation for many key elements of the PCMH. Specifically, health IT can provide critical information about the patient to the entire care coordination team across all stages of care, support physician-patient communication, enable more timely and accurate performance measurement and improvement, and improve accessibility of the physician practice to the patient.

The attached resources expand on the role of health IT across many aspects of the PCMH. These are free to be downloaded to learn more about this topic.  Please use appropriate acknowledgment and citation when sharing this content.

 

Meaningful Connections Guide

As health care leaders explore how best to draw upon billions in new federal dollars for health information technology, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) has released a white paper identifying the capabilities and functionalities of eHealth applications that experts consider crucial to support the patient centered medical home (PCMH).
 
Meaningful Connections: A resource guide for using health IT to support the patient centered medical home was released at the PCPCC's April 28, 2009 Stakeholder's Working Meeting in Washington, DC.

Meaningful Connections is a guidance document to steer the development and implementation of health IT in a direction that supports the overarching principles of the PCMH.  It does not point to specific products, applications or vendors; rather, it speaks in global terms about the capabilities and functionalities needed to build an information platform that will support the key elements of the PCMH and to enable the improvements in quality, safety, effectiveness and access that PCMH is designed to deliver.

If you wish to download the full guide or the supplemental FAQ, please download the attachment below.