About the Patient-Centered Primary Care Home Program
Mission
The Patient-Centered Primary Care Home Program is part of Oregon's efforts to fulfill a vision of better health, better care and lower costs for all Oregonians. By recognizing clinics that offer patient-centered primary care, we can begin breaking down the barriers that stand between patients and good health.
Right now, we pay into a broken system where care is fragmented, inefficient and wasteful. We treat illness, instead of preventing it. Emergency rooms are no longer last resorts, but for many their first. The clinics we rely on for care must deliver some care based on what they are paid for, instead of what may work better. And in Oregon, too often health outcomes are different depending on our race, our class, our neighborhoods and other factors that affect health disparities.
Through a patient-centered model of care, a team of health professionals is focused on breaking down barriers between different types of care to keep us healthy. Working together, they form the "primary care home" for patients. They coordinate our needs with attention to preventive care and managing chronic conditions. This is especially important for people who have serious chronic conditions that require multiple types of care from a variety of providers — saving time, money and lives.
The Patient-Centered Primary Care Home Program now administers the application, recognition, and verification process for practices applying to become Patient-Centered Primary Care Homes. The program is also working with stakeholders across Oregon to support adoption of the primary care home model.
The Patient-Centered Primary Care Home Program is pursuing innovative payment methods that move away from a system of quantity and toward a system based on quality and outcomes. To meet that goal, the program is working with all Oregon Health Authority programs, including the Oregon Health Plan, public employees, and Oregon educators, in order to provide enhanced financial support to recognized primary care homes for their OHA-covered patients.
History
The Oregon Legislature established the Patient-Centered Primary Care Home Program in 2009 through passage of House Bill 2009. The goals of the program are to develop strategies to identify and measure what a primary care home does, promote their development and encourage Oregonians to seek care through recognized Patient-Centered Primary Care Homes.
The program worked with diverse groups of Oregonians from across the state, the PCPCH Standards Advisory Committee, to define what a primary care home looks like.
In 2010, the Oregon Health Policy Board charged the Oregon Health Authority with providing access to patient-centered primary care by 2011. This would include services for all members of the Oregon Health Plan, state employees and Oregon educators. The ultimate goal is that 75 percent of all Oregonians will have access to care in a Patient-Centered Primary Care Home by 2015.
Beginning in 2011, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Home Program, in partnership with the Northwest Health Foundation, convened a task force to inform recommendations that would support broad implementation of the primary care home model across Oregon. The task force membership included clinicians, patients, public health, and healthcare delivery technical experts from across Oregon. The program is now working to implement the recommendations of the task force, as outlined in the final task force report 
, and administer the application, recognition, and verification process for practices applying to become Patient-Centered Primary Care Homes.