Equipping practice facilitators with resources to help them support primary care transformation

The challenge

To improve patient care, retain high-quality primary care providers, and control costs, primary care practices across the United States worked to become patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs). This was no small task. PCMH redesign requires changes to almost every process and system in a primary care practice to put patients at the center of care — from improving phone access to collecting and monitoring data for population-based care and redesigning referral systems with hospitals and specialists. 

Practice facilitation, also called “coaching,” is a proven way to support system change in a practice. Practice facilitation can increase the motivation and quality improvement skills of a practice to improve health for its patients. That’s why the MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation (now the ACT Center) partnered with Qualis Health (now Comagine Health) to develop the Coach Medical Home curriculum. Supported by the Commonwealth Fund, Coach Medical Home is an online tool designed to equip practice facilitators with the skills and knowledge to effectively support practices on the journey toward medical home transformation and recognition. The curriculum is based on the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative Framework for Practice Transformation, which consists of 8 change concepts to guide primary care transformation.

The work

The curriculum includes evidence about effective practice transformation coaching from 25 published programs and 8 expert interviews. We drew extensively on our experience as leaders and coaches in the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative. Using these data and input from a user group, we identified 6 curricular topics and developed learning objectives and content related to these topics.

What we learned

The Coach Medical Home curriculum guides coaches in the following areas: getting started with a practice; recognition and payment; sequencing changes; measurement; learning communities; and sustainability and spread.

Impact

Coach Medical Home is a publicly available web-based curriculum that provides tools, resources, and guidance for practice transformation support programs, including practice facilitators and learning community organizers.

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