Bringing home the patient centered medical home: lessons learned from an academic family medical center.

Putting patients at the center of health care is the basic premise of the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Our clinic, the Family Medical Center (FMC) is located at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences campus and has over 23,000 annual patient visits. In 2008, we decided to apply for the National Committee for Quality Assurance' (NCQA) PCMH recognition and had made several process changes at our clinic to meet the requirements. In 2010, FMC was the first clinic in Arkansas to be recognized by NCQA as a Level 3 PCMH. In this article, we share the actions taken and lessons learned in bringing home the PCMH to our practice.