California Primary Care Association has partnered with Burlington, Mass.-based health IT firm Arcadia Solutions for an initiative meant to spur development of patient-centered medical homes.

CPCA represents the interests of California community clinics and health centers and their patients. Officials say this new partnership will transform primary care practices into patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) with help from Arcadia's cloud-based Health Home Accelerator Program. The goal is to offer health systems a timely, efficient path to PCMH recognition – reducing recognition time by 30 percent.

With the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s (NCQA) PCMH program as the focus for improving primary care, officials say this partnership will expedite the process while transforming primary care practices. The standards set by NCQA describe clear and specific criteria and give primary care practices information on how to best organize patient care, work in teams and track patient care over time.

The PCMH model facilitates partnerships between patients and their physicians, and when appropriate, the patient’s family. Care is facilitated by registries, information technology, health information exchange and other means to assure that patients get the indicated care when and where they need and want it.

[See also: PCMH model focus of new FQHC demo project.]

To simplify this process and help providers receive incentives offered by the NCQA, Arcadia Solutions and CPCA have developed the Health Home Accelerator, which guides providers through the process of transforming into a PCMH. Arcadia Solutions and the CPCA have bundled this product with standardized clinical coaching focused on aiding practices through the process of receiving NCQA recognition and driving sustainable health home transformation to deliver improved care quality and outcomes.

“Following a year of development, we’re excited to partner with Arcadia Solutions to provide a program and service for providers looking to transform their practices into PCMHs,” said Carmela Castellano-Garcia, president and CEO of the California Primary Care Association. “We have 150 providers committed to this program and intend to support all 900 of our member clinic sites to achieve recognition over the next five years. It’s important for us to help providers across California build and sustain successful medical homes, which this program accomplishes.”

[See also: Patient-centered medical home model in the wings for Trinity Health providers.]

The Health Home Accelerator Program helps large organizations, such as primary care providers, health plans and physician associations, rapidly enroll practices onto an accelerated track toward becoming a PCMH, say Arcadia officials.

By adopting a standardized approach to medical home transformation, the product makes PCMH scalable through a consistent enrollment and baseline assessment process and task-level tracking for practice transformation activities. This will support clinicians in focusing on care delivery, by accelerating the recognition process and by providing the tools and templates needed to report on their progress for the NCQA standards. The product also has tracking and measurement capabilities to assess the status of the program in real-time.

“Our goal has been and will continue to be to support provider organizations in delivering the highest quality of care, improving quality and lowering total cost," said Andrew Principe, vice president , healthcare solutions, Arcadia Solutions. "Achieving practice transformation across the large, robust and diverse set of practices that make up the CPCA membership is a significant challenge."

He added that "the expertise that CPCA brings to the table makes this a very exciting partnership for both entities. We truly value their thought leadership and guidance and are excited to be announcing this partnership."