The Puget Sound Health Alliance and the State of Washington launched a multi-payer medical home pilot on May 1, 2011. The pilot, which includes eight medical groups with 12 locations with approximately 25,000 patients, is designed to restructure incentives to improve outcomes. In this pilot, primary care practices may receive an additional monthly fee per patient to support work that normally does not get reimbursed in a fee-for-service payment model, such as care coordination, increasing flexible access to care, tracking and monitoring chronic conditions and doing preventive outreach or follow up planning. Primary care practices that participate in the pilot will share savings if they can reduce preventable ER and hospital admissions while maintaining or improving quality care in a number of areas such as care for chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease and depression. More information is available at here.
