News from Providence St. Joseph Medical Center
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POLSON — Providence St. Joseph Medical Center has been recognized as a Level 3 Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) by the National Council on Quality Assurance (NCQA). What, exactly, does that mean?
NCQA sets specific standards for primary care practices to use in organizing care around patients, working in teams and coordinating and tracking care over time. The criteria provide an excellent guide to reorganizing care delivery to create a PCMH. This type of healthcare setting facilitates partnerships between individual patients and their personal physicians — and when appropriate, the patient’s family. Many practices utilize a Care Team Approach to enhance access to the team that will help provide for the patient’s healthcare needs. The PCMH practice uses registries, information technology, online patient portals and other means to ensure that patients get indicated care when and where they need it.
NCQA standards are aligned with the core components of primary care: access and communication; patient tracking and registry functions; care management; patient self-management support; electronic prescribing; test tracking; referral tracking; performance reporting and improvement; and advanced electronic communications.
The standards include must-pass elements considered essential to the PCMH. These elements are required for practices at all recognition levels. Practices get points for each element of the standards they have accomplished. NCQA awards levels of recognition from the scores that practices achieve, with Level 3 being the highest.
“The patient-centered medical home promises to improve health and health care,” said NCQA President Margaret E. O’Kane. “The active, ongoing relationship between a patient and a physician in medical homes fosters an all-too-rare goal in care: staying health and preventing illness in the first place. PPC® - PCMH™ Recognition shows that Drs. Irwin, Mitchell and Smith at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center have tools, systems and resources to provide their patients with the right care at the right time.”
NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information for consumers, purchasers, health care providers and researchers.
