UnitedHealthcare, a UnitedHealth Group company, and IBM are collaborating with select primary care physician practices in Arizona to launch the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) model.

UnitedHealthcare will provide selected primary care practices with technology, infrastructure support and care coordination, with the goal of leveraging improved information systems to enhance patient access to care, the quality and safety of the care experience and patient satisfaction with healthcare providers.

The pilot program, open to UnitedHealthcare's employer-sponsored Medicare Advantage and Medicaid health plan customers, will include four to six primary-care practices from UnitedHealthcare's physician network in Phoenix and Tucson.

The PCMH model is designed to provide comprehensive, information-supported primary care for children, youths and adults. It aims to provide patients with more comprehensive and coordinated care from their primary care physician, or "medical home."

The model places special emphasis on preventing disease and improving the care of chronic conditions and emphasizes behavioral health support and patient education.

Primary care physicians providing care based on the PCMH model stand to receive enhanced reimbursement in recognition of superior care coordination and improvements to access, communications, delivery of preventive and chronic care and patient experience and satisfaction.

"UnitedHealth Group recognizes the importance of enhancing the quality capabilities and rewards for primary care practice as a key element in the provision of coordinated, comprehensive patient-centered care," said Reed Tuckson, MD, UnitedHealth Group's executive vice president and chief of medical affairs. "We are especially pleased to partner with an innovative company like IBM to seek new solutions for enhancing cost-effective care outcomes for their valued employees. We continue to applaud the leadership of our nation's primary care specialty societies and physician practices in Arizona."

UnitedHealthcare is IBM's largest health plan in Arizona, serving nearly 11,000 beneficiaries. In support of the pilot, IBM will encourage employees to seek primary care services from physicians participating in the pilot program.

"We at IBM know that established and continuous access to a personal primary care physician who really looks out for the whole person and not just a disease is proven to produce materially better health outcomes at lower costs. Still, our system in the United States is allowing the professionals trained to deliver this type of care to decline precipitously," said Martin Sepulveda, MD, IBM's vice president of integrated health services. "Through our transformative pilot program with UnitedHealthcare, leading primary care practices and our own employees in Arizona, we are stepping up both our commitment and our actions to assist in reversing that decline and make patient-centered primary care a reality for our own employees and those of other companies across the United States."

UnitedHealthcare and IBM expect the PCMH model of care will, over time, assist in lowering healthcare costs for patients and their employers by reducing emergency room visits, hospitalizations and disabilities that result from the lack of immediate access to primary care physicians when people have medical needs.

"UnitedHealthcare and IBM are committed to supporting primary care physicians through the Patient-Centered Medical Home model, which provides for more centralized and comprehensive care that is focused on preventive care and disease prevention," said Dawn Bazarko, UnitedHealthcare's senior vice president of clinical innovation. "We believe the Patient-Centered Medical Home model enhances the delivery of higher-quality, more coordinated care, while improving outcomes and reducing healthcare costs."