Public and private payers are testing the patient-centered medical home model by shifting resources to enhance primary care as an important component of improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of the US health care delivery system. Medicaid has been at the forefront of this movement. Since 2006 twenty-five states have implemented new payment systems or revised existing ones so that primary care providers can function as patient-centered medical homes. State Medicaid programs are taking a variety of approaches. For example, Minnesota's reforms focus on chronically ill populations, while in Missouri a 90 percent federal match under the Affordable Care Act is helping integrate primary and behavioral health care and address issues of long-term services and supports. These reforms have led to better alignment of payments with performance metrics that emphasize health outcomes, patient satisfaction, and cost containment. This article focuses on trends in Medicaid patient-centered medical home payment that can inform public and private payment strategies more broadly.

This article describes patient-centered medical home initiatives that seventeen states have launched. These initiatives use national recognition or state-based qualification standards along with incentive payments to address soaring costs and lagging health outcomes in state Medicaid programs. Even though these initiatives are in their infancy, early results are encouraging. Modest increases in payment to physicians, aligned with quality improvement standards, have not only resulted in promising trends for costs and quality, but have also greatly improved access to care. Several state programs have already demonstrated declines in per capita costs for patients enrolled in Medicaid; increased participation of physicians in caring for Medicaid patients; and high patient and provider satisfaction. These early results give states good reason to continue developing patient-centered medical homes as part of their Medicaid programs. This article provides a closer look at these innovative models, to inform public and private reform efforts.

The population's response to a public health emergency can mean the difference between an incident and a tragedy. As the community's health educators, public health agencies promote ''productive behaviors'' to avoid panic during anxietyproducing situations. The Rhode Island Department of Health used a social marketing approach to identify the public's ''wants and needs'' in anticipation of an emergency. The formative research included age and race=ethnicity-specific focus groups and in-depth interviews with representatives of agencies serving special populations to determine information needs, preferred formats, trusted sources, and other aspects of emergency preparedness. Program staff used this information to design and bulk mail an initial pre-intervention awareness flyer and, months later, a 32-page informational booklet called ''Make a Kit, Make a Plan, Stay Informed.'' This ''product'' provided the population with three key preparedness behaviors out of the extensive range of options. Evaluation of the booklet indicated that an estimated 10% of the population changed their behavior by engaging in one of more of the preparedness activities. The authors conclude that social marketing provides a useful and systematic process for planning and implementing a project aimed at changing public health emergency preparedness behavior.

Provider organizations are increasingly held accountable for health care spending in vulnerable populations. Longitudinal data on health care spending and use among people experiencing episodes of homelessness could inform the design of alternative payment models. We used Medicaid claims data to analyze spending and use among 402 people who were continuously enrolled in the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) from 2013 through 2015, compared to spending and use among 18,638 people who were continuously enrolled in Massachusetts Medicaid with no evidence of experiencing homelessness. The BHCHP population averaged $18,764 per person per year in spending-2.5 times more than spending among the comparison Medicaid population ($7,561). In unadjusted analyses this difference was explained by greater spending in the BHCHP population on outpatient care, including emergency department care, as well as on inpatient care and prescription drugs. After adjustment for covariates and multiple hypothesis testing, the difference was largely driven by outpatient spending. Differences were sensitive to adjustments for risk score, which suggests that housing instability and health risk are meaningfully correlated. This longitudinal analysis improves understanding of health care use and resource needs among people who are homeless or have unstable housing, and it could inform the design of alternative payment models for vulnerable populations.

Multipayer collaboratives of all types will encounter legal, logistical, and often political obstacles that multipayer medical home initiatives have already overcome. The seventeen multipayer medical home initiatives launched between 2008 and 2014 all navigated four critical decision-making points: convening stakeholders; establishing provider participation criteria; determining payment; and measuring performance. Although we observed trends toward voluntary payer participation and more flexible participation criteria for both payers and providers, initiatives continue to vary widely, each shaped largely by its insurance market and policy environment. Medical home initiatives across the United States are demonstrating that multipayer reform, although complex and difficult to implement, is feasible when committed stakeholders negotiate strategies that are responsive to the local context. Their experiences can inform, and perhaps expedite, negotiations in current and future multipayer collaborations.