The Valley Foundation, the practice plan of the UAB School of Medicine Huntsville Regional Medical Campus, was recently recognized as a Level 2 Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCHM) 2014, a national program to acknowledge patient-centered care and long-term participative relationships.
The PCHM is a model of care emphasizing care coordination and communication to transform primary care by identifying practices that promote partnerships between individual patients and their personal clinicians. The three-year distinction, awarded by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, is determined by examining an organization’s patient care practices against set criteria. Benchmarks to be awarded a Level 2 distinction include written standards for patient access and continuity of care; patient feedback materials; adapting to patient’s cultural needs and using information technology for prescription; and test and referral tracking for coordination with other providers.
“Our earning this distinction is an objective, third-party validation of all the work our doctors and staff members do in providing the best primary care in Huntsville,” said Scott Bence, executive administrator of the Valley Foundation and assistant dean of the Huntsville Regional Medical Campus. “We’ve implemented changes across our practices and specialties to engage and involve our patients in their care. While the criteria for the patient-centered medical home recognition didn’t influence the changes we made, comparing our organization against the criteria was a great way to measure the effectiveness of those changes.”
The Valley Foundation includes practices in five specialties—pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and psychiatry. The foundation was awarded a Level 1 PCHM ranking in 2011, holding it for three years.
May 01, 2014