Primary Care Centers Achieve Medical Home Status

Cooperstown, NY – Twenty-three Bassett Healthcare Network primary care health centers across nine counties have achieved medical home recognition. The designation comes from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Physician Practice Connections® – Patient-Centered Medical Home™ (PPC®-PCMH™) program for using evidence-based, patient-centered processes that focus on highly coordinated care and long-term participative relationships.

Bassett’s Vice President of Regional Operations, Dr. Gerald Groff, explains, "Medical home designation is voluntary, but a trend across the country because it’s better for patients. Given the regional nature of the Bassett network, a critical component of our success is the effective use of information technology and our new electronic medical record, which puts everything at the fingertips of our clinicians in order to provide the care patients need no matter where they access our services."

The PPC®-PCMH™ program identifies practices that promote partnerships between individual patients and their personal clinicians, instead of treating patient care as the sum of several episodic office visits. Each patient’s care is tended to by clinician-led care teams, who provide for all the patient’s health care needs and coordinate treatments across the health care system. Medical home clinicians demonstrate the benchmarks of patient-centered care and appropriate use of proven health information systems. Early evaluations of the PPC-PCMH have shown promising results in improving care quality and lowering costs by increasing access to more efficient, more coordinated care. By avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations and emergency room visits, these early results are producing savings for payers, purchasers and patients.

"The patient-centered medical home promises to improve health and health care," said Margaret E. O’ Kane, president of NCQA. "The active, ongoing relationship between a patient and a clinician in medical homes fosters an all-too-rare goal in care: staying healthy and preventing illness in the first place. PPC®-PCMH™ Recognition shows that the Bassett Healthcare Network facilities that have achieved this status have the tools, systems and resources to provide patients with the right care at the right time."

To receive NCQA PPC®-PCMH™ Recognition, which is valid for three years, these primary care health centers demonstrated the ability to meet the program’s key elements embodying characteristics of the medical home. The standards are aligned with the joint principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home established with the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Osteopathic Association.

Key program components required to achieve recognition:

• Written standards for patient access and enhanced communications
• Appropriate use of charting tools to track patients and organize clinical information
• Responsive care management techniques with an emphasis on preventive care
• Adaptation to patients’ cultural and linguistic needs
• Use of information technology for prescriptions and care management
• Use of evidence-based guidelines to treat chronic conditions
• Systematic tracking of referrals and test results
• Measurement and reporting of clinical and service performance

About Bassett Healthcare Network

Bassett Healthcare Network is an integrated health care system that provides care and services to people living in a 5,600 square mile region in upstate New York. The organization includes six corporately affiliated hospitals, as well as skilled nursing facilities, health centers and health partners in related fields.

Bassett Medical Center, the foundation of the network, is a 180-bed acute care inpatient teaching facility in Cooperstown, New York employing over 3,200 people. The medical center offers a broad range of specialty care and maintains a strong academic program through its affiliation with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Bassett was formally established as a medical school campus of Columbia P & S in 2009.

The Bassett Research Institute located on the Cooperstown campus and the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health conduct research in basic and clinical science, population and public health studies.

The Bassett Physician Group (BPG) is comprised of a full-time, salaried staff numbering over 400 physicians and other advance practice clinicians who provide primary and specialty care at the Bassett Clinic and staff Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown. Through the Bassett Regional Network, Bassett physicians and other health professionals also provide preventive, primary, urgent and specialty outpatient care at 28 rural health clinics and 18 school-based health centers throughout nine counties. Ambulatory patient visits for the system approach 700,000 annually.

NCQA is a private, non-profit organization that accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. Learn more at www.ncqa.org