Patient Activation and Empowerment within DoD Patient-Centered Medical Homes
Semester
The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an attempt not only to expand and reform health insurance, but also to drive quality improvements and decrease national spending in health care. The bipartisan support for inclusion of the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model in the ACA reflects a consensus that the system is broken and something can, and must, be done to fix it. The PCMH model builds on decades of research and experience in a variety of practice settings to offer patient-focused and team-based integrated care.
The objective of this project is to look at patient activation and how this concept might apply to the Military Health System's (MHS) PCMH model. In order to do so, this concept's definition, principles, theoretcial models, methods of implementation, and evaluation will be investigated. In this paper, we will first discuss the development of the PCMH as a care delivery model as well as its current classification criteria, highlighting current opportunities and challenges. The Capstone team also defined patient activation, and a related concept, patient empowerment, The team delved into relevant examples of PCMH implementation to look for applicable incentives that might be useful in the context of increasing patience activiation. Provider perspectives on the concept of PCMH and patient perspectives on the use of incentives will also be provided.