Health care reform efforts often begin by focusing on conditions and processes specific to adult patients, and this focus can result in challenges for pediatric-serving practitioners to meet required improvements. One example was the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) transformation effort following the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) guidelines.
Realizing the potential challenges to be faced by pediatric practices, the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program (VCHIP) and the Department of Vermont Health Access (DVHA) of the State of Vermont partnered together to support pediatric-informed facilitators to help pediatric practices during PCMH transformation.
This study characterizes the impact of pediatric-informed facilitators, provides benchmark data on NCQA scores, number of facilitation meetings and the time between facilitation start and end, and compares pediatric and adult-serving practices.
This study found no difference between pediatric and matched adult-serving practices in NCQA score, number of facilitation meetings, or weeks to NCQA scoring. These results suggest that pediatric-informed facilitators can help pediatric practices achieve NCQA PCMH recognition on par with practices serving adult patients. Supporting primary care practices with specialty-informed facilitators can assist integration into health care reform efforts.
Findings from this project were reported in an article published in Clinical Pediatrics.
Harder, V.S., Long, W.E., Varni, S.E., Samuelson, J., Shaw, J.S. (2016). Pediatric-Informed Facilitation of Patient-Centered Medical Home Transformation. Sage Journals-Clinical Pediatrics, 56(6) 564-570. https://doi.org/10.1177/0009922816669788