There's No Place like Home, for Your Health: Are Medical Homes the Answer to the Health Care Crisis?

There's No Place like Home, for Your Health: Are Medical Homes the Answer to the Health Care Crisis?

On July 7-8, 2009, the Carter Center's Primary Care Initiative – a two-year project seeking to improve the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses in the primary care setting – brought together the nation's leading experts on mental health, disease prevention, and health reform to discuss a popular new model for reform of the primary care system, the "medical home."

Research shows that many patients seen in primary care settings in the United States also suffer from a behavioral or emotional health problem such as anxiety, depression, or problem drinking. Yet, primary care physicians often do not have the tools necessary to diagnose or treat patients with mental illnesses. Many cases of depression are incorrectly diagnosed and only a third of patients treated for depression in the primary care setting show meaningful improvement.

Many policymakers believe overhauling the primary care setting into a new model of centralized, coordinated care – a "medical home" – would prevent failures to accurately diagnose and treat complicated conditions and improve communication between different care providers working with the same patient.

The Primary Care Initiative complements ongoing work of the Center's Mental Health Program, founded by former U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 1991 to reduce stigma and discrimination against people with mental illnesses and to achieve greater equity for mental health in the health care system.

Read the Proceedings of the Carter Center's Medical Home Summit (PDF)