At our medical home our pediatrician:

• supported us & allowed us to go through the pain, anger and sadness,
  
• informed us of our options & treated us with respect,
  
• touched us, looking us straight in the eye,
  
• had good communication with our MD’s in Boston,
  
• truly cared and always looked at the big picture,
  
• patted us on the back for a good job and encouraged us,
  
• advised us about early intervention,
  
• recognized we needed emotional help,
  
• told us of a great pediatric dentist for our son’s teeth,
  
• told us about respite services,and was always concerned for our mental state, and he pushed us to go out to dinner more.

The office nurse at our medical home was:

• understanding and patient with me,
  
• allowed me to cry and curse on some days,
  
• was always prompt withgetting us in to see our PCP and
  
• recognized when we needed acallback from our doctor personally at the end of the day
  
• she got us in immediately and got us into a room away from the waiting area–and germs.

Professionals

Care coordination
A care coordinator in a medical home can really “grease the wheels” for a child, family and community; I help families and community members access physicians services to get what they need; in turn these same folks help me access resources on behalf of families.

Primary care providers –

Having a quality improvement process in place with good basic skills, this is essential to building a medical home, to doing the work.

I think we would feel pretty guilty as a practice if we didn’t continue our medical home improvement work …there are still a lot of very quiet families out there whom we need to learn to reach.

Truly this is the best opportunity that has been available to our practice since I began practicing here in Exeter twenty-four years ago. This is a great thing to do.

My only regret about implementing the medical home improvement model is that I didn't get started fifteen years ago.