WEDNESDAY, March 1, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Primary care physicians working in patient-centered medical home (PCMH) practices more often have PCMH-related functions available, according to a Feb. 17 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.
Esther Hing, M.P.H., from the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., and colleagues collected data during the induction interview for the 2013 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey to determine the characteristics of primary care physicians in PCMH practices versus those in non-PCMH practices.
The researchers found that 18.0 percent of office-based primary care physicians worked in practices certified as PCMHs in 2013. Compared with physicians in non-PCMH practices, a higher percentage of primary care physicians in PCMH practices had at least one physician assistant, nurse practitioner, or certified nurse midwife on staff (68.8 versus 47.7 percent). The percentage of primary care physicians reporting electronic transmission as the primary method for receiving information on patients hospitalized or seen in emergency departments was higher for those in PCMH practices versus non-PCMH practices (69.6 versus 41.5 percent). Furthermore, the percentage of primary care physicians reporting quality measures or quality indicators to payers or organizations monitoring health care quality was higher in PCMH versus non-PCMH practices (86.8 versus 70.2 percent).
"A general pattern of higher performance or availability of PCMH-related functions was observed among physicians in PCMH practices compared with physicians in non-PCMH practices," the authors write.
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