The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced on Monday that 500 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) have been selected for the FQHC Advanced Primary Care Practice (APCP) demonstration project, which will evaluate the impact of the patient-centered medial home on improving care and lowering costs.

The 500 FQHCs, chosen from more than 800 applicants, span 44 states across the country. The applicants will receive approximately $42 million over three years – from Nov. 1, 2011, through Oct. 31, 2014 – to improve the coordination and quality of care they deliver to people with Medicare and other patients. The hope is that by the end of the demonstration, participating FQHCs will be recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) as Level 3 PCMHs.

To help defray the cost of transforming into a person-centered, coordinated, seamless primary care practice, FQHCs will receive a monthly care management fee of $6.00 for each eligible Medicare beneficiary attributed to their practice. This payment, which will be made quarterly, is in addition to the usual all-inclusive payment FQHCs receive for providing Medicare covered services. The fee will be paid automatically, without the need to submit a claim.

Health centers may also use this funding to expand their hours, make same-day appointments and accommodate patients with urgent care needs.

Officials say this improved payment system will reward clinics for accomplishments such as as helping patients manage chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.

"The goal of this demonstration is to help patients get the care they need in a primary care setting rather than in an emergency department‚" said CMS Administrator Donald M. Berwick, MD. "When patients are able to use a health center as their primary source of care, it helps primary care doctors, nurses and specialists coordinate their care.  Health centers will also use healthcare dollars more wisely as patients receive the right tests, right medications and right treatments in the right setting."

The CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center) and the Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) will provide technical assistance to participating community health centers throughout the demonstration.
 
To study the process and challenges involved in transforming community health centers into advanced primary care practices, the Innovation Center will conduct an independent evaluation of the demonstration. The evaluation will assess the project's impact on hospital admission rates, emergency department visits rates, access, quality and cost of care provided to Medicare beneficiaries.  The evaluation will also assess whether the demonstration was cost effective.

"The lessons learned from this demonstration project will help all community health centers improve on their long-standing commitment to providing high quality, patient-centered primary care," said Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Administrator Mary K. Wakefield, PhD, RN. "This program will help strengthen the relationship between the more than 8,100 health center sites HRSA helps fund and the communities they serve."

Click to the next page to see the full list of the 500 participating FQHCs.