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Johns Hopkins Lipitz Center

The Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health received a $1.7 million grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation to provide technical assistance designed to help medical practices qualify for and participate in CMS's three-year Medicare Medical Home Demonstration project. The MMHD is mandated by the 2006 Federal Tax Relief and Health Care Act.

Under the direction of Charles E. Boult, MD, MPH, MBA, the Lipitz Center will develop and make available to MMHD participants information, education, and technical assistance that draws on lessons learned from the Hopkins-developed Guided Care model. In the Guided Care model, a specially trained registered nurse is based in a primary care office and works closely with physicians, chronically ill patients and community services to improve quality of life and reduce the need for expensive inpatient health services. Early research has shown that Guided Care improves the quality of health care and physician satisfaction, while reducing health care costs and family caregiver strain.

In return for care management fees and incentive payments, practices participating in the MMHD program will provide their patients with comprehensive, coordinated, evidence-based care. Practices will be required to provide patients with convenient access to care, track patients' health status through the use of health information technology, and support patients' management of their conditions.

Using TransforMED's Medical Home Implementation Quotient (MHIQ) online tool, participants will be able to self-assess their readiness to become recognized as a medical home. The MHIQ also provides tips and resources to help practices implement medical home processes and improve performance before completing the CMS/NCQA medical home recognition process.

The program includes a variety of education and information resources, including 2-day regional Learning Collaboratives; a free, asynchronous, CME-granting, online course for physicians titled "Physicians in Medical Homes"; a free online course for nurses titled "Guided Care Nursing"; information about selecting Health Information Technology (HIT) and Electronic Health Records (EHR); and an implementation manual for practices that want to adopt Guided Care.

The Lipitz Center program will also inform practices of TransforMED's fee-based Medical Home Facilitation services, where they can elect to get help from experienced Practice Enhancement Facilitators in transforming their practices into medical homes.

Other partners in the project include the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American College of Physicians (ACP), the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), the Johns Hopkins Center for Teaching and Learning with Technology, and The Institute for Johns Hopkins Nursing.