PCMH:Evidence and Evaluation

PCMH:Evidence and Evaluation

NEW AHRQ release:  Early Evidence on the Patient-Centered Medical Home

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is pleased to announce the release of Early Evidence on the Patient-Centered Medical Home. This white paper was prepared in collaboration with our partners at Mathematica Policy Research and summarizes findings from early evaluations of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH). It also offers concrete suggestions for improving the evidence base about the PCMH through more rigorous evaluations. 

PCMH:Home

The American Journal of Managed Care recently published a concise version of the paper, which can be viewed at http://www.ajmc.com/publications/issue/2012/2012-2-vol18-n2/Early-Evaluations-of-the-Medical-Home-Building-on-a-Promising-Start. In addition, an expanded version of the white paper that provides extensive methodological details will be released in late spring 2012.

AHRQ also provides resources to help strengthen future research on the PCMH and build a solid evidence base. These resources include a brief for decision makers, Improving Evaluations of the Medical Home, which describes the importance of commissioning effective evaluations of the PCMH and how this can be achieved. A second resource, Building the Evidence Base for the Medical Home: What Sample and Sample Size Do Studies Need?, provides further information for researchers and evaluators about why evaluations of the medical home should account for clustering of patients within practices, how to do this, and what samples of patients and practices are needed for studies to achieve adequate statistical power.
Additional white papers, briefs, and a searchable index of almost 1,000 citations are also available at www.pcmh.ahrq.gov.