The medical home, also known as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), is a team-based health care delivery model led by a health care provider to provide comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients with a goal to obtain maximal health outcomes. (Wikipedia)
As discussed in prior blogs the American medical care system is broken, controlled by big businesses (insurance, drug companies, large medical centers) who profit from an inefficient model and are permitted to take huge amounts of money designated for health care. A good way of observing this is by checking the stock prices for these companies over the last 30 years and the salaries of CEOs at these companies and large medical centers. Because of our giant national medical bill attempts to increase expenses by caring for the poor and those needing extensive, expensive services are often rejected by taxpayers. Our congresspeople and state legislators get so much money from big business that policies to limit drug prices and control by private insurers are rarely initiated and more rarely successful. A rebellious legislator knows that lots of money will be flowing to opponents’ campaign coffers if she supports change to the protection given health care businesses.
The medical home system has had limited acceptance primarily because it costs more. But it returns a much better level of care, especially for access, prevention and management of chronic illness, often emphasizing lifestyle medicine. A notable exception to the limitation of medical homes has been through the work of Phil Cass in Columbus, Ohio. His story is summarized in a long interview:
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