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The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recently renewed the UVA Department of Family Medicine’s Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Recognition. The PCMH model of primary care combines teamwork, information technology, and patient input to improve the patient’s quality and experience of care.

The four UVA Family Medicine practices that received this accolade include the following:

• UVA Family Medicine Primary Care Center (Charlottesville)
• UVA Family Medicine at Crossroads (North Garden)
• UVA Family Medicine at Stoney Creek (Nellysford)
• UVA Family Medicine and Specialty Care (Crozet)

The term “medical home” is “about having a central place for key medical services, including a patient’s physical and mental health care needs, preventive services, and care of acute and chronic illnesses,” said Andrew R. Lockman, MD, Associate Professor and lead physician for the Department of Family Medicine’s North Garden practice.

Rebekah Compton, DNP, Department of Family Medicine, describes how the honor is achieved: “PCMH practices use NCQA standards to guide the implementation of team-based care coordination, patient involvement, and quality improvement.”

At UVA Health System, the Practice Transformation Leadership Team tracks departmental performance on a number of PCMH priorities. These include access to team-based care and continuity, use of evidence-based guidelines to help patients set and meet self-management goals, and performance on quality improvement initiatives chosen by each team.

UVA’s Practice Transformation Leadership Team includes Lockman; Compton; Kawai Tanabe, MPH, Research Assistant, Department of Family Medicine, and Amanda Sebring, Project Coordinator, Department of Family Medicine.

Lockman recognizes that everyone is involved in the department’s success. “There are so many people who are involved in this,” he said. “It’s not just [the committee]; it’s the whole department, including clinic leaders, providers, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, care coordinators, and patients. … This isn’t something we can do in a vacuum by ourselves without support from the Medical Center and resources from the health system IT group.”

UVA Family Medicine received the PCHM Recognition for the first time in 2015.

Thank you to Family Medicine for putting the patient at the center of all you do!