Clinical Resources

Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH)

The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is an approach for providing comprehensive, coordinated primary care to adults, youth, and children. It facilitates partnerships between individual patients and their personal physicians, and when appropriate, the patient’s family. Below are links to the different accreditation bodies and the process for a Health Center becoming a PCMH.

Three national organizations stand out among the multitude of PCMH-recognizing and accrediting programs. Only the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC),  The Joint Commission (TJC),  and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) have PCMH programs that are truly national in scope, have been formalized in a published set of standards, and have evidence of being used by a large number of medical organizations as the primary and preventive care delivery model.  

While the AAAHC, Joint Commission, and NCQA define their standards differently, each shares a similar focus: to identify medical practices that exemplify the Patient-Centered Medical Home principles and practices while setting a standard for other practices to achieve. Each organization’s PCMH program is based on joint principles of the PCMH developed by the medical associations that developed the PCMH concept:

• Having a personal physician/provider in a team-based practice
• Having a whole-person orientation
• Providing coordinated and/or integrated care
• Focusing on quality and safety
• Providing enhanced access

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Helpful Links

• Primary Care Medical Home Option for Joint Commission Accredited Practices
• National Committee for Quality Assurance PCMH–Government Recognition Initiative Project (GRIP)
• Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) PCMH Certification

For more information on Clinical Quality, contact Sonja R. Fuqua, PhD, RN- Chief Clinical Quality Officer, 601-981-1817 or sfuqua@CHCAMS.org.