CHCs, MU, & PCMH: An Alphabet Soup that Translates into Patient-Centered, High Quality Health Care for the Community

Background: Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) have the opportunity to participate in two exciting initiatives that are both an opportunity and a challenge. The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) offers a recognition program for achieving a Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) while the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) offers more than $20 billion in incentives to providers who adopt and demonstrate Meaningful Use of electronic health records.

Objective/purpose: The purpose of this session is to describe a learning collaborative to support community health centers to become meaningful users of EHRs while also establishing themselves as NCQA recognized person centered medical homes.

Methods: The presentation will discuss the strategies employed to help community health centers achieve these two goals including face-to-face learning sessions, webinars, a variety of distance learning platforms, and shared tools and resources.

Results: The session will highlight the successes of the pilot which was initiated in New York as well as steps to expand this work to a national level.

Discussion/conclusions: Both PCMH and Meaningful Use yield significant benefits including improvements in quality of care provided, patient and provider satisfaction, and reductions in healthcare costs. Yet, meeting the PCMH and MU requirements is difficult, expensive and resource-intensive- especially for safety net providers. By teaming together, FQHCs have identified successful models to achieve these dual goals that can be shared with other providers across the US.