Home Sweet Medical Home

We have published a number of articles describing the benefits of the medical home, especially when it comes to coordinating care for children with special health needs. But what about children who don’t have special needs? Is it worth it to create a medical home environment for these otherwise healthy children? According to Long et al. (doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-1739), it definitely is. Using data from the 2003 National Survey of Children’s Health on more than 70,000 children, the authors show a myriad of benefits of high quality cost-effective health outcomes suggesting we strive to create a medical home environment for all children in our practices, which is what the AAP (and the Affordable Care Act) have been preaching. Now we have some nice evidence that will help us walk the walk rather than talk the talk — so give this article your attention and keep creating medical homes for all your patients!