The Medical Home concept can simply mean that a patient has a relationship with a physician who, alongside a team of other health care professionals, will provide care for that patient and coordinate all of his or her health care needs.
It sounds simple, but for too many people, health care is very complicated. Because of how we pay for health care in the U.S., patients are too often bounced from place to place without any one source of care where they can expect complete and coordinated treatment and prevention services. Patients who lack a relationship with one trusted source of health care tend not be as healthy as those who do have such a relationship. Patients who are uninsured fare even worse.
A Medical Home doesn’t necessarily have to be in a doctor’s office. It could be in a community or school-based clinic or even a patient’s own home. What’s different about the medical home concept is that care revolves around the patient instead of the patient having to navigate the health care system alone.
Physicians, employers, insurance companies, and policy makers and other people interested in improving the health care system are starting to work together to create and promote medical homes where patients can develop long-term relationships with providers to improve and better maintain their health.
North Carolina and Duke University have been experimenting with the concept of medical homes for many years. In 1998, North Carolina’s Medicaid program starting supporting physician-led networks to offer medical homes to Medicaid enrollees. The program was highly successful both in improving overall health and in saving money. By paying doctors $2-3 a month per Medicaid enrollee to more closely manage care, the Medicaid system saved $60 million in 2003 and $120 million in 2004. (
http://www.communitycarenc.com/ 
)
At Duke, the Division of Community Health has been working with community partners to increase quality and access by providing medical homes for the most vulnerable members of the community, including recent immigrants, school-aged children and seniors. For example, though the
Just for Us program, seniors with low-income and chronic illness receive home-visits from a primary care team that includes family physicians, nurse practitioner and physician assistant, nutritionist and occupational therapist and social workers.
More Information on Medical Homes:
NPR produced a documentary about access to primary care which discusses the role of medical homes.
“Medical Home Concept Gains Momentum”
TransforMED
TransforMED is an American Academy of Family Physician initiative that seeks to generate positive transformations in family medicine and primary care.
“New Models of Care: Building Medical Homes in Empowered Communities”
Dr. Lloyd Michener, Chair of the Duke Dept. of Community and Family Medicine, writes in the North Carolina Journal of Medicine about finding new ways to improve primary care.
“Quality Matters: Patient-Centered Medical Homes”
The Commonwealth Fund Digest includes an article on growing support for Medical Homes.
AMA and the Medical Home
Dr. Richard J.D. Pan, Chair, AMA Council on Medical Education, offers a presentation on Medical Homes.
Joint Principles of the Patient-Centered Home
http://www.medicalhomeinfo.org/Joint%20Statement.pdf 
The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American College of Physicians (ACP), American Osteopathic Association (AOA)
offer a joint statement supporting medical homes.
NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home Resources and Tools
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) offers a variety of tools and resources for measuring medical homes.
The Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative
The Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative is a coalition of major employers, consumer groups, and other stakeholders who have joined with organizations representing primary care physicians to develop and advance the patient centered medical home.
Duke Prospective Health
Duke Prospective Health is a Duke initiative – led by former health system president and CEO Ralph Snyderman – that emphasizes early detection and disease prevention methods.
Educating Health Professionals for Medical Homes
One of the keys to ensuring that every patient has a medical home is training health care professionals to work within this model. At Duke, the following educational programs are emphasizing medical homes:
Health Leadership Program
Master of Health Sciences in Clinical Leadership
Family Medicine Residency Program
The concept of a Medical Home is an old-fashioned idea that is getting a lot of fresh attention.
DHTS Web Services
DUKE UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
DUKEHEALTH.ORG