Health information technology in support of patient-centered medical homes is low among non-metropolitan family medicine practices.

The term “medical home” has been in use since at least 1967, when the American Academy of Pediatrics published Standards of Child Health Care. It defined medical home care as “accessible, continuous, comprehensive, family-centered, coordinated, and compassionate.” The Future of Family Medicine report, published in 2004, is generally credited with initiating the current national conversations around the principle of a patient-centered medical home (PCMH). Interest in the concept of a medical home was heightened in 2008, when the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates voted to adopt a core set of PCMH principles endorsed by the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, a broad-based coalition of large national employers, major primary care physician associations, health care quality improvement associations, and others. Section 3502 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 provides more momentum by creating a medical home program within Medicare. Are physician practices, especially non-metropolitan primary care practices, ready to become PCMHs? We use a nationwide survey of physician practices to partially answer this question, focusing on the use of health information technology (HIT). RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis Rural Policy Brief