Petaluma Health Center earns NCQA level 3 PCMH recognition

Today, the California Primary Care Association (CPCA) announced that one of its members, the Petaluma Health Center, has received Level 3 Recognition from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for its implementation of the Patient Centered Health Home (PCHH) model of care. The Petaluma Health Center (PHC) has been a part of CPCA's PCHH technical assistance initiative since May 1, 2012, which helped streamline their recognition process.  

"NCQA level 3 PCMH recognition is acknowledgement of the quality work that Petaluma Health Center staff performs every day. I am so proud of PHC achieving NCQA recognition at the highest level," said Teresa Tillman , Petaluma Health Center's Quality Director.  "Utilizing Arcadia's Accelerator portal provided through CPCA and completing the CPCA coach mock review process was a critical step to submitting our survey. The mock reviewer's attention to detail and accommodation to our timeline was stellar!  We appreciate CPCA's support to health centers for this significant achievement."

A health home is an approach to delivering primary care that uses a 'whole person' orientation to provide comprehensive health care by facilitating an active partnership between patients, their family, and their primary care provider team to provide high quality, timely care in a coordinated and consistent way.  This approach provides patients with what care they need, when they need it, and patients work as equal partners with their provider team in managing their care.

Health care reform legislation passed in 2010 has encouraged health centers to implement a PCHH model of care as part of system wide reform. CPCA's initiative is built on the NCQA PCMH 2011 Standards, which CPCA believes very closely align with our members' values.  The standards set by NCQA describe clear and specific criteria and gives primary care practices information on how to best organize patient care, work in provider teams and track patient health over time.

"We are so pleased to have one of our members receive level three recognition through our initiative.  The PCHH initiative, which was officially launched in October, builds on the team based approach to care that health centers have used as their model for many years and leverages their existing strengths to build a sustainable standard for health home activities and services," said CPCA President and CEO Carmela Castellano-Garcia . "Our long-term goal is to have each of our member sites receive PCHH recognition through this program and develop successful health outcomes in their communities."

The process for recognition is complex and time intensive, often taking community clinics and health centers with limited staff time and resources more than a year to complete, which is why CPCA's initiative was created to help our members achieve recognition through substantial technical assistance. Much of this recognition support is delivered through an integrated online project management tool, the PCHH Accelerator Portal.  This portal was created by Arcadia Solutions, Inc., which has a long history of working with CPCA on state-wide data initiatives. This cloud-based tool is unique to CPCA's PCHH initiative and works to simplify the NCQA recognition process as well as support on-going practice transformation.

"We are thrilled to have the opportunity to support a forward thinking health center like PHC through the PCMH recognition process," said Michael Meucci , Director of PCMH Transformation of Arcadia Solutions.  "We have been working with health centers across the country to make the process of organizing and submitting for recognition more manageable for clinic organizations. Our PCMH Accelerator not only guides providers through the process of transforming into a PCMH but also allows care teams to focus on what they do best: deliver improved care quality and outcomes to their patients."