Eight Penn Medicine Clinical Care Associates (CCA) Internal Medicine and Family Medicine practices received level III certification for their efforts to provide coordinated, efficient care through the Patient Centered Medical Home program (PCMH) run by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). This Level III certification is the highest designation granted by the NCQA.
The newly recognized Penn Medicine CCA practices include – Cherry Hill Family Medicine, Main Street Family Medicine, Spruce Street Internal Medicine, Penn Primary Care East Marshall, South Jersey/Gibbsboro Family Medicine, University City Family Medicine, Woodbury Heights Internal Medicine, and the J.Edwin Wood Resident Clinic.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System now features 26 practices with this designation; (consisting of 20 CCA locations and six Clinical Practices of the University of Pennsylvania).
“For the last three years, our CCA practices worked on redesigning their office processes to focus on being as patient centered as possible,” said Charles Orellana, MD, senior medical director of CCA. “This means providing comprehensive, well coordinated care in a team based fashion. Practices worked hard at assuring easy, same day access for patients, better coordinating care, more fully engaging their patients, and leveraging information technology to monitor and improve the quality of care provided.”
Orellana credits providers, staff and practices for their effort to modernize primary care and notes that increasing the number of level III PCMH practices is a vital step forward in health care reform.
The three-year designation comes from NCQA’s Physician Practice Connections—Patient-Centered Medical Home (PPC-PCMH) program, which uses evidence-based, patient-centered processes that focus on highly coordinated care and long-term medical professional-patient participatory relationships. The PMCH program strives to improve quality and efficiency of primary care by recognizing practices that support strong partnerships between patients and their clinicians, rather than looking at patient care solely as a series of office visits.
Research shows promising results in advancing quality of care and decreasing costs by expanding access to more efficient and coordinated care. In this model, clinician-led “medical home” teams deliver patient care and coordinate treatment across the health care system. The medical home clinicians at these Penn Medicine practices exhibit the “benchmarks of patient-centered care, including open scheduling, expanded hours, and appropriate use of proven health information systems,” according to the NCQA. In addition to improving the patient experience, this program helps avoid unneeded hospitalizations and emergency room visits, which can save money for payers, purchasers and patients.
For a complete list of primary care medical practices and clinicians receiving this NCQA honor, visit http://recognition.ncqa.org and click here for the list of other Penn Medicine level III CCA practices.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
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