The Veterans Health Administration Patient Aligned Care Teams: Lessons in Primary Care Transformation

Excerpt

As the nation moves rapidly to implement the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), the successes and challenges experienced by the nation’s largest PCMH demonstration—the Veterans Health Administration (VHA)’s Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) model—are particularly salient. In this initiative, over 7,000 primary care teams across the nation are in the process of transforming their operations.1 The collection of papers in this supplement provides a window into this complex system redesign during its first few years. Many findings mirror those of other PCMH demonstrations, despite a context of organizational supports and challenges that is atypical of most US practices. Other findings show lessons learned about taking PCMH rapidly to scale in large systems. These findings are likely to be useful to others contemplating or engaged in transformation. …