Health Resources & Services Administration

Tens of millions of Americans receive quality, affordable health care and other services through HRSA’s 90-plus programs and more than 3,000 grantees. HRSA programs provide health care to people who are geographically isolated and economically or medically vulnerable. This includes programs that deliver health services to people with HIV, pregnant women, mothers and their families, those with low incomes, residents of rural areas, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and those otherwise unable to access high-quality health care. HRSA programs also support health infrastructure, including through training of health professionals and distributing them to areas where they are needed most, providing financial support to health care providers, and advancing telehealth. In addition, HRSA oversees programs for providing discounts on prescription drugs to safety net providers, facilitating organ, bone marrow, and cord blood transplantation, compensating individuals injured by vaccination, and maintaining data on health care malpractice payments.

HRSA PATIENT-CENTERED MEDICAL HOME SUPPORT

The Health Resources and Services Administration invests in health centers to ensure that people in resource-limited communities receive quality, patient-centered, affordable health care. This way, HRSA provides standards and guidelines for not only the development of health centers, but also for their oversight.

In seeking the highest-quality health care for these communities, HRSA also supports centers that attain and maintain NCQA PCMH Recognition. HRSA’s support demonstrates its commitment to health care access, team-based, coordinated care and quality improvement. Earning PCMH Recognition helps health centers develop these aspects of care while increasing patient and staff satisfaction and reducing costs.

NCQA’s PCMH Recognition program is the most widely adopted PCMH evaluation program in the country.

Overview

WHY PCMH FOR HEALTH CENTERS?

  • Benefits for Health Centers

    The PCMH model of care can help build better relationships between patients and their clinical care teams.

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  • Alignment to Social Determinants of Health

    Health centers care for patient populations with unique characteristics and SDOH that create significant variations in health outcomes. The Health Center Program Compliance Manual requires centers to assess their patient populations and identify SDOH and health disparities.

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  • Alignment to HRSA Requirements

    HRSA uses the Uniform Data Systems (UDS) Resources to assess the operational, financial and clinical quality performance of health centers and uses the Health Center Program Compliance Manual to assess compliance with required tasks.

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  • Alignment to Medicaid Requirements

    Medicaid requirements are designed to monitor and improve aspects of care and services that are also found in key NCQA PCMH concept areas such as access, health care costs and clinical quality outcomes.

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The Health Center Perspective on PCMH

This series of HRSA-commissioned videos demonstrates how the PCMH model of care can greatly impact and improve health center operations.

Cahaba Medical Care

This video highlights Cahaba Medical Care and how the medical home model has allowed them to maximize the skills, training and abilities of their clinical and non-clinical staff to improve operations, promote better quality and improve satisfaction among center staff.
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California and North Carolina’s Primary Care Association

This video features interviews with the California and North Carolina PCA staff members, discussing their efforts and how they have helped centers improve the quality of care and service they provide and maintain that quality in shifting circumstances and varied challenges.
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Chinatown Service Center

This video explores the challenges of the Chinatown Service Center in making sure the center's patient population are receiving necessary cancer screening. Center staff and patients discuss the importance of language accessibility and cultural competence in reminding patients and the ways in which the PCMH model reinforces and strengthens staff's efforts.
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Cowlitz Family Health Center

This video explores how Cowlitz Family Health Center focuses on whole person care - medical care, behavioral healthcare and meeting life's challenges - to efficiently and effectively provide high quality services to their patients. The video explores how adding services focused on substance use disorder and homelessness provided additional opportunities to meet patient needs and ensure positive outcomes.
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Grace Health

This video highlights Grace Health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrate how Behavioral Health providers were able to integrate PCMH practice’s workflow using telehealth across a spectrum of customers.
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Health & Wellness Center – Stigler Oklahoma

In this video, staff members from the Health & Wellness Center in Stigler, Oklahoma share their experiences with whole person care and the use of technology to better track care metrics. These two key processes support success in a Value-Based Care environment and offer significant benefits for NCQA PCMH-certified health organizations.
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Migrant Health Center (Spanish)

This video highlights Migrant Health Center’s innovative solutions to address the significant challenges faced by their patient population in Puerto Rico, including lack of insurance, high poverty and a lack of transportation. To address access issues specifically, the video highlights the virtual and home care options the health center has used to ensure high quality care.
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Penobscot Community Health Care

Penobscot Community Health Care discusses how they manage challenges related to staffing/resource shortages by utilizing elements of the PCMH model such as the team-based approaches to care and access options (e.g., telemedicine) to maintain the quality of care and service they provide.
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Piedmont Health

This video demonstrates Piedmont Health’s success with the PCMH concept of care and details where the care model can make a difference – for patients, and staff.
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Shasta Community Health Center

This video highlights the superlative work Shasta Community Health Center is doing to engage patients to ensure routine preventive services, like cancer screenings, are back on track following the crisis of the COVID pandemic.
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Valley Professionals Community Health Center – Integrated Care

This video highlights how Valley Professionals Community Health Center integrates behavioral health and dental care into their primary care setting to improve the quality of life of their patients. They highlight the transformative role of PCMH for everyone in their health system, especially their patients.
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Animated Videos on Key PCMH Recognition Processes and Systems

Key Processes Explained

Animated Videos on Key PCMH Recognition Processes and Systems
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Value of PCMH

Animated Videos on Key PCMH Recognition Processes and Systems
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HOW HEALTH CENTERS CAN APPLY FOR HRSA SUPPORT OF PCMH RECOGNITION

Community health centers can use this link to find step-by-step information for completing their center’s Notice of Intent (NOI): HRSA Accreditation and Patient-Centered Medical Home Recognition Initiative | Bureau of Primary Health Care. If you already submitted your NOI, you can confirm your NOI’s status with HRSA via the BPHC contact form.

To submit an NOI, Look-Alikes can navigate to the BPHC contact form, go to Look-Alike Designation, select the Accreditation and Patient Centered Medical Home Recognition (APCMH) – LAL option and then select the Notice of Intent option from the drop-down menu to submit a NOI. To submit a PCMH Recognition certificate, select the Updating Recognition and Accreditation Certificates option from the drop-down menu.

If the sites in question are no longer operational, please alert your Representative (“Ask a Question” in Q-PASS) so we can update our records.

Consider submitting your NOI as soon as possible. Direct questions to HRSA via the BPHC contact form.

EDUCATION & TRAINING

NCQA provides education, training and technical assistance to community health centers and Look-Alikes that want to become NCQA-Recognized PCMHs or maintain their Recognition.

LEARN MORE ABOUT PCMH RECOGNITION

NCQA’s PCMH Recognition program is the most widely adopted PCMH evaluation program in the country. More than 10,000 practices (with 50,000+ clinicians) are Recognized by NCQA. More than 95 organizations support NCQA Recognition through financial incentives, transformation support, care management, learning collaboratives or MOC credit.

The PCMH model of care puts patients at the forefront of care. Patient-centered medical homes build better relationships between patients and their clinical care teams.

Research shows that PCMHs improve quality and the patient experience, and increase staff satisfaction—while reducing health care costs. Practices that earn Recognition have made a commitment to continuous quality improvement and a patient-centered approach to care.

Learn more about NCQA’s PCMH Recognition program here.

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