The Barre Family Health Center is featured on the cover of the July 7 Sunday Telegram & Gazette Business Matters section, in a story about the advent of patient-centered medical homes.
The center, which is a UMass Medical School family medicine residency site, earned national recognition after adopting the new approach to medical care that is being piloted there and at other Central Massachusetts sites, including the outpatient pediatrics practice at UMass Memorial Medical Center.
“Quality is improving across these practices,” said Judith L. Steinberg, MD, MPH, clinical associate professor of medicine and family medicine & community health. Dr. Steinberg is deputy chief medical officer for the UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division, which is analyzing what happens at the practices in the state’s medical home program.
Other UMMS faculty quoted in the story are Ronald Adler, MD, assistant professor of family medicine & community health, who practices at Barre, and Stephen Earls, MD, clinical associate professor of family medicine & community health and the center’s medical director. Family medicine resident Marco Cornelio, MD, is also quoted.
The health center, which the National Committee for Quality Assurance accrediting organization recognized as a medical home in September 2012, has changed how it operates, from records to staff meetings to how patients are greeted, in order to improve quality of care and, eventually, reduce health care costs. “If someone came in for a wellness visit during the last year, their visit was different,” said Dr. Earls.
Read the full story at http://www.telegram.com/article/20130707/NEWS/307079984/1002/business.
