The Ohio General Assembly completed a legislative package last week that will establish 44 existing primary care practices as training centers for patient-centered medical homes. The bill, which passed both the Ohio House and Senate unanimously, is expected to be signed by Gov. Ted Strickland as early as this week.

Medical homes rely on health information technology, including electronic health records, health information exchanges, decision support tools and e-prescribing, to enable a medical team led by a primary care physician to coordinate aspects of a patient's preventive, chronic and acute care.

Many advocates say that medical homes go a long way toward achieving the holy grail of healthcare: better outcomes at a lower cost.

Rep. Peggy Lehner, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill with Rep. Peter Ujvagi, a Democrat, says that the legislation is not designed to test the medical home concept but to begin putting in place the educational framework that physicians will need to run a successful medical home practice.

"The efficacy of the medical home is well-proven and is really the wave of the future for primary care medicine," Lehner said. "Now it's a question of how do you put it in place, and one of the things we know is that this will radically shift the way physicians practice.

"As a result, they're going to have to understand how to practice as a team and when it's appropriate to utilize other members of the team in conjunction with the technology that's such a key part of the medical home."

Under the legislation, an advisory group will choose 40 primary care practices run by physicians and 4 run by nurse practitioners to act as training centers for medical homes. Those selected will be reimbursed for up to 75 percent of their related health IT costs. The advisory group will also work with Ohio's medical and nursing schools to develop training plans.

"Technology is absolutely critical as to whether the medical home works or not and medical students and physicians are going to need to learn how to make the best use of the technology moving forward," Lehner said. "This legislation will put Ohio at the forefront of education about the patient-centered medical home."

Ohio has a number of other medical home projects underway, including a network of medical homes in Cincinnati.