I'm very happy to be attending the Kansas Patient Centered Medical Home Initiative meeting which will be taking place on September 30 and October 1, 2011 in the Kansas City area. For those unfamiliar, this is how Kansas law defines the term "medical home:"
The definition of a medical home according to Kansas law (K.S.A. 75-7429) is: “A health care delivery model in which a patient establishes an ongoing relationship with a physician or other personal care provider in a physician-directed team, to provide comprehensive, accessible and continuous evidence-based primary and preventive care, and to coordinate the patient’s health care needs across the health care system in order to improve quality and health outcomes in a cost effective manner.”
In addition on their website, here is a more practical explanation of the PCMH model:
For an individual, the PCMH model provides a regular source of primary care, which is associated with better health outcomes at lower costs. But, the PCMH model will also improve the patient experience. For example, patients enjoy enhanced access to care through open scheduling, expanded hours and new options for communication between patients, their personal physician and practice staff.
I will be attending the meeting at the invitation of the meeting organizers, and I'd like to thank them for that. I hope to be talking to some speakers and some attendees and reporting about that on the website here. In the video above, I talked about the upcoming conference in my latest podcast. You can download my latest podcast here.
For the Kansas PCMH meeting, I invite you to follow the @KansasPCMH twitter feed. We'll also be using the hashtag #pcmh. If you want to learn more about the Kansas Patient Centered Medical Home Initiative, check out their wordpress blog. Hope you'll be able to join us on twitter on Friday & Saturday!