TransforMED Offers Free Medical Home Assessment Tool

Medical practices working on becoming medical homes now can measure their progress, thanks to a free and comprehensive assessment tool recently made available by TransforMED, practice redesign initiative affiliated with the AAFP.

Dubbed the Medical Home Implementation Quotient, or MHIQ, the online program guides users through eight modules, each asking between 13 and 30 questions about a practice's progress. The MHIQ replaces a simpler, "teaser" version of a practice-assessment tool that's been available from TransforMED since January.

Physicians who use the MHIQ are quizzed about practice procedures, protocols and enhancements in the areas of

Elaine Skoch, R.N., TransforMED's practice metrics manager, played a key role in developing the resource. She said that physicians need to dedicate a minimum of 15 minutes to complete each of the eight units. However, users can work on the modules in random order and can stop and start the process without losing information. A database embedded in the program will retain user results and tabulate progress as the user returns to input new data.

The tool generates a report based on a user's responses to questions in each module and then assesses the practice's progress toward becoming the kind of patient-centered medical home (1-page PDF; About PDFs) TransforMED and the AAFP have embraced.

"At first blush, it may seem that some of the questions aren't related specifically to the patient-centered medical home because they concentrate on the management aspects of the practice," said Skoch. "But physicians who don't pay attention to practice management issues may not survive in today's health care market."

Skoch stressed that the MHIQ is a work in progress and that tweaks may be made as physicians begin to use the tool and provide feedback to TransforMED. For instance, many questions can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" response. "We didn't include a 'Does not apply' category," said Skoch, and that may pull down the results of small and solo practices.

TransforMED President and CEO Terry McGeeney, M.D., M.B.A., said practices that score in the top two tiers of the four levels possible are well on their way to becoming recognized by public and private payers as patient-centered medical homes.

In the future, that recognition may mean financial incentives for physicians who participate in medical home pilot projects, said McGeeney. But in the short term, "family medicine practices need to make changes now to keep the specialty of family medicine alive" he said.

"There may be new money attached to the medical-home model in the future, but that could be years off, and the need for practice change is today," McGeeney added.