TUESDAY, June 3, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model of care is associated with quality improvements compared to care provided by physicians using paper medical records or electronic health records (EHRs), according to a study published in the June 3 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Lisa M. Kern, M.D., M.P.H., from the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, and colleagues compared the quality of care provided by physicians in PCMHs with both that provided by physicians using paper medical records and that provided by physicians using EHRs without PCMHs. The trial design was a prospective cohort study. Participants included 675 primary care physicians in 312 practices and involved 143,489 patients.
The researchers found that for four of 10 quality measures (eye examinations and hemoglobin A1c, testing for patients with diabetes, chlamydia screening, and colorectal cancer screening) the PCMH group improved significantly more over time than the paper group or the EHR group (adjusted P < 0.05 for each). The odds of overall quality improvements were 7 and 6 percent higher in the PCMH group than in the paper and EHR group, respectively (adjusted P < 0.01 for each).
"In conclusion, we found a positive, modest association between the PCMH model of primary care and quality improvement over time," the authors write. "The PCMH effect was independent of but may have been enabled by the EHR technology in place in the PCMH practices."
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