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Change Concepts Overview


The Safety Net Medical Home Initiative (SNMHI) developed a framework—The Change Concepts for Practice Transformation—to help guide primary care practices through the PCMH transformation process.

"Change concepts" are general ideas used to stimulate specific, actionable steps that lead to improvement. Our framework includes eight change concepts in four stages:


Each Change Concept includes three to five "key changes." These provide a practice undertaking PCMH transformation more specific ideas for improvement.

The Change Concepts were derived from reviews of the literature and discussions with leaders in primary care and quality improvement. They have been most extensively tested by the 65 safety net practices that participated in the SNMHI, but they are applicable to a wide range of primary care practice types. They have also been adopted by other improvement initiatives nationwide.

We created a set of resources and tools to help practices understand the framework and implement each of the eight Change Concepts. These resources were developed in partnership with practices that participated in the SNMHI and were informed by reviewers and contributors from across the country. All resources are in the public domain.

To learn about any one of the eight Change Concepts, navigate to the relevant page by using the menu to the left. To see all of the Change Concept resources and tools, see the All Resources page.  General overview materials are provided below.


Change Concept Resources

Introduction to the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative Implementation Guide Series
In this introduction, we describe the SNMHI's framework and how to navigate the library of resources and tools we created to help practices implement the PCMH Model of Care.

The Change Concepts for Practice Transformation: Overview
This document provides a printable list of the Change Concepts for Practice Transformation.

Strategies and Tools to Orient and Engage Patients and Families To The Patient-Centered Medical Home Model of Care
This tool presents techniques that sites can use to educate patients and families about the PCMH Model of Care and provides examples of how SNMHI sites oriented and engaged patients and families in PCMH transformation.

A brief overview of the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative's framework is provided in the following video.

Introduction to the Change Concepts (August 2009)
Speaker: Ed Wagner, MD MPH, Director, MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation at the Group Health Research Institute
Video for Windows| Video for Mac