Safety net hospitals and medical homes: An overview

Government and health care experts involved in health reform discussions are promoting the “medical home” concept as a mechanism for providing high-quality, comprehensive, patient-centered, continuous, and coordinated outpatient care. The more than 100 urban safety net hospitals and health systems that are members of the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (NAPH) are significant providers of outpatient care for medically underserved populations. Indeed, NAPH members on average provide almost 500,000 outpatient visits per year, 40 percent of which are for primary care services. Given this volume, many public hospital-affiliated clinics are embracing the medical home model to create efficiencies in patient care.

This presentation will offer an overview of how public hospitals around the nation are employing the medical home model, emphasizing its impact on quality of care for underserved populations. Additionally, this session will offer examples of how public hospitals are forming medical homes, and will describe a current collaborative effort to examine medical home adoption in safety net hospitals. The talk will conclude by introducing two subsequent presentations that offer insights into its implementation at different public hospital systems.