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An essential ingredient in successfully adopting the medical home model is getting patients more involved in their health, says John Wasson M.D., professor of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, N.H. To achieve that goal, Wasson led an effort to create howsyourhealth.org, a Web site that more than 100,000 patients have used to provide information to their doctors.

The free site includes a detailed questionnaire that patients fill out to describe their health. This registry then can be shared with physicians regardless of whether they have an electronic records system, Wasson says. The site also includes a personal health record that patients can use to track medical information over the long haul. Physicians can pay a fee to customize the offerings and create a practice-specific version of the registry.

Wasson also is the lead faculty member for medicalhome.org, an eight-hour online curriculum designed to help physicians adopt the medical home model.

The best way to judge whether the model is adopted properly, Wasson argues, is whether patients can say "I receive exactly the health care I want and need exactly when and how I want and need it." He cautions against taking a process-centered, rather than patient-centered approach.

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