Table 2.

A Brief History of the Patient-Centered Medical Home

YearEvent
AAP = American Academy of Pediatrics; AAFP = American Academy of Family Physicians; ACP = American College of Physicians; AOA = American Osteopathic Association; NCQA = National Committee on Quality Assurance; NDP = National Demonstration Project; PCMH = patient-centered medical home; WHO = World Health Organization.
1967The AAP introduces the medical home concept to coordinate care for children with multiple needs (expanded model with 13 elements was introduced in 2002)1922
1992Barbara Starfield summarizes the evidence for the essential attributes of primary care for a high-functioning health care system23 (updated in 199824 and 200525)
1996The Institute of Medicine “advocates development and sustained support of means to make primary care available to all Americans,”26(p1) and notes: “First, primary care is the logical basis of an effective health care system. Second, primary care is essential to reaching the objectives that constitute value in health care”26(p52)
2001The Institute of Medicine Crossing the Quality Chasm report calls for transforming a “fundamentally flawed” US health care system27
2004In the Future of Family Medicine Project, 7 family medicine organizations propose a “New Model” of care, the “personal medical home”28,29
2005TransforMED is created as a subsidiary of the AAFP to test the “New Model.” (The model evolves to encompass PCMH features,30 but includes no payment reform— a key tenet of the PCMH)
2005The Commonwealth Fund proposes a “2020 vision of patient-centered care”31 (and later begins funding pilot programs)
2006The ACP proposes the advanced medical home, which includes principal care as well as primary care32
2006Medical home demonstration projects within Medicare are called for in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act, to be implemented by 2010.33
2006The NDP is launched34
2007Four organizations (AAFP, AAP, ACP, AOA) jointly issue a statement on the PCMH in February35
2007The Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative is launched in March36
2007The NCQA launches a tool—Physician Practice Connections–Patient-Centered Medical Home (PPC-PCMH)—which preemptively become the de facto standard for recognition as a PCMH37
2008WHO declares 2008 the year of primary health care38,39
2009Multiple pilot projects are in process and early findings begin to be published1,4042
2009Incorporation of the PCMH in federal and state reform legislation increases, and the number of demonstration projects and individual practice and system efforts grows