Health Care or Medical Home

The medical home is a patient-centered health care delivery model, which reconceptualizes primary care as a central element of health care systems that work effectively to optimize patient health outcomes. The medical home combines the traditional concepts of primary care—first-contact, comprehensive, coordinated, quality continuity of care that is based on an ongoing relationship between patient and physician—with health information technology and new improved processes of care. The medical home can be described as a primary care practice in the information age. This entry focuses on the importance of medical homes to families, their role in the improvement of family health, and strategies medical practices can implement to become medical homes.