Health IT: Home Court Advantage

Health IT systems are critical to the success of patient-centered medical home models for health care, a new study finds.

Health IT "is the essential front-end investment," concludes the study, Medical Home 2.0: The Present, the Future, from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. "For patients to receive appropriate care and care teams to effectively manage and monitor patient behavior, a robust HIT investment including electronic medical records, broadband transmission, personal health records, decision support and web-based services to facilitate access are necessary."

The theory behind the medical home model is that continuous, patient-focused care from a multidisciplinary team led by a primary care physician is a more cost-effective way of delivering high-quality care. The Deloitte study, released this month, looks at how federal health-reform legislation affects the models. It also examines early results of pilot studies.

Health IT systems are considered a "foundation of patient care, performance measurement, communication and patient education," according to the report. One of the principals of patient-centered medical home models is that health care is coordinated across different facilities. Electronic health records are central to that coordination.

Because the costs are "substantial," most practices will require financial assistance to buy and implement health IT systems, the report says.

For home models to succeed, physicians must be willing to use health IT in diagnosing, treating and interacting with patients, the study finds. The caveat? "Established practitioners are prone to discount these principles in favor of an overly simplistic preference that they be paid more and not be exposed to risk," the report's researchers found.

One incentive for implementing patient-centered medical home models might be an impending shortage of primary care physicians. Health IT-enabled options such as e-visits and telemedicine can help physicians handle bigger patient loads, the report says.

The Washington, D.C.-based Deloitte Center for Health Solutions is the health-services research arm of Deloitte LLP.