Primary Care Research & Evaluation

The Primary Care Research and Evaluation Program, established in 2010, is located jointly in the Department of Family Medicine and the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development. The program includes an expansive portfolio of research and outreach in family medicine and pediatrics, particularly on measurement of the core attributes of a patient- and family-centered medical home and primary care practice transformation. Rebecca Malouin, PhD, MPH, assistant professor, is the director.

The program is staffed by Amy Faucher, MS, program manager, who joined the program in January 2011. Ms. Faucher recently completed a Master of Science in survey methodology from the University of Michigan and brings extensive experience in survey methodology to the program. Julie Ramisch, MS, project manager and doctoral student in the Marriage and Family Therapy Program, also supports several of the ongoing initiatives within the program. Sarah Merten, MPH, served as a project manager from 2009-2010 and continues as a College of Human Medicine medical student. Shivani Shah and Justin Lockwood, College of Human Medicine medical students and Samantha Martens and Robert Elliott, undergraduate students, are research assistants within the program.

The program is supported through federal, state, private, and community grants and contracts. Dr. Malouin is principal investigator on two large grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The first, Defining and Building a Patient-Centered Medical Home, aims to assess the correlation between a commonly utilized medical home recognition tool and primary care attributes, and the relationship of each to clinical outcomes. The second grant, titled Primary Care Practice Transformation by Two Payers, will assess the comparative effectiveness of the patient-centered medical home pilots of two regional health plans on outcomes such as patient, physician and staff experience, quality of care, patient outcomes, and cost of care.

The program also released the monograph Measuring Medical Homes: Tools to Evaluate the Pediatric Patient- and Family-Centered Medical Home, published by the National Center for Medical Home Implementation and the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2010. The monograph includes a review of many of the patient and family experience tools used to assess the provision of primary care by general pediatric practices. The development of the monograph was funded by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ National Center for Medical Home Implementation through a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

The program continues to support the evaluation of the Priority Health Patient-Centered Medical Home Pilot in Michigan, the patient, physician and staff experience components of the UnitedHealthcare Patient-Centered Medical Home Pilot in Arizona, and the Children’s Healthcare Access Program in Kent County, Michigan. The program also had funds from the Bentz family to support research on communication between primary care providers and educators about children with special health needs.