Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Medical Home

The Patient-Centered Medical Home (PC-MH) is an approach to providing comprehensive primary care for children, youth and adults. The PC-MH is a health care setting that facilitates partnerships between individual patients, and their personal physicians, and when appropriate, the patient's family. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American College of Physicians (ACP), and American Osteopathic Association (AOA), representing approximately 333,000 physicians, have developed joint principles to describe the characteristics of the PC-MH. These principles include: having an ongoing relationship with a personal physician, the personal physician directs the team who collectively take responsibility for the health of its patients, the personal physician provides for the patient's health care needs (or arranges care with other qualified professionals), the care is coordinated across all elements of the health care system, quality and safety measures are in place, enhanced access to care is available, and payment appropriately recognizes the added value to patients in a PC-MH.