CHIPRA Massachusetts Medical Home Initiative

Program Location: 
Boston, MA
Number of Practices: 
13
Payer Type: 
Grant
Payers: 
Medicaid
Description: 

To implement a medical home model of care, NICHQ is leading a 29-month Learning Collaborative (5 year initiative). Thirteen practices from across Massachusetts were selected to participate in the Collaborative. Each site will have its own Practice Transformation Facilitator to lead the adoption of medical home characteristics accompanied by the help of a Massachusetts Department of Public Health Care Coordinator. The three components to the CHIPRA Massachusetts Medical Home Initiative include: 

  • Administer and test the set of 24 core measures of pediatric healthcare endorsed by the Agency for Health Care Quality; 
  • Convene a Statewide Child Health Coalition to provide advice and guidance to the State; 
  • Support the implementation of a "medical home" model of care at pediatric practices across the Massachusetts.  

The program will apply and evaluate recommended measures of children's health care quality and to make comparative quality performance information available to providers, families, and policymakers. The State will also use learning collaboratives and practice coaches to support the process of transforming pediatric practices into medical homes that provide family and child-oriented care, measure and improve that care, and enhance outcomes, particularly for children with targeted conditions: Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, asthma, and childhood obesity.

Improved Health: 
  • The percentage of children with a developmental referral and 3 month follow up reflects improvement over the life of the collaborative. Teams that had a care coordinator found it easier to track follow up and those who lacked a process struggled. The process improved overall from approximately 30% to 80% over the period of the project. 
Improved Patient/Clinician Satisfaction: 
  • On the CHIPRA Patient Experience Survey, 75% of respondents said they were able to call their provider’s office to get an appointment for their child right away.

  • On the CHIPRA Patient Experience Survey, 89 % of respondents said their provider showed respect for what they had to say. 

  • Practices participating in this study were accustomed to receiving quality reports from other payers but favored the CHIPRA Practice Report for its design and format, which made it easy to read and understand.
  • Unlike other quality reports, the CHIPRA Practice Report provided practices with data for both their MassHealth and commercially-insured patients. Thus practices were given a fuller view of their performance for providing quality care across their patient population. 
Improved Access: 
  • For the practices that reported on this measure in the CHIPRA Learning Collaborative, transition plans were in place initially for only 20 percent of eligible adolescents. By the end of the learning collaborative, the number had more than doubled to 43 percent.
  • Those who did report data, started out with a very few number of transitions plans in the first quarter as they tested out how to create useful plans for families and developed processes to identify youth who needed a transition plan. By the last 6 months of the data reporting period, the aggregate data reflects that about 40% of youth were getting transition plans.

Last updated August 2015
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