Patient-Centered Medical Home
In his special message on health and wellness in the fall of 2012, Gov. Rick Snyder said, “We need to 
develop a primary‐care based system with a patient-centered medical home (PCMH), where care is coordinated; patients receive appropriate preventive services, such as cancer screenings and dental care; electronic health records are utilized; and health information is shared in a secure and efficient manner.”
MAFP supports the governor’s goal and believes there are areas in Michigan Medicaid where PCMH could be implemented. MAFP advocates for a per‐member‐per‐month (PMPM) payment model that moves away from the traditional, transaction-based fee‐for‐service model.
Private insurance companies and other state Medicaid programs have successfully adopted the PCMH model and saved hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The Patient-Centered Medical Home Model...
- Requires practice reimbursement reform. Traditional fee‐for‐service models do not compensate physicians for the time‐consuming tasks required for care coordination.
- Centers on a personal, physician‐led team to coordinate patient care in order to manage chronic disease and avoid emergency room visits.
- Demonstrates that when primary care finance models are redesigned to allow family physicians to formally share responsibility for a patient population, positive behavior change will occur. The budget deficits of recent years have resulted in a focus on these kinds of reforms, especially in high‐cost areas such as health care.
- Makes family medicine and other primary care specialties more competitive and attractive to students by decreasing the enormous income disparity with sub-specialists.