About the Education-Centered Medical Home

The Education-Centered Medical Home (ECMH) is a four-year, longitudinal, ambulatory experience based in existing primary care clinics where multilevel student teams (four from each class) work collaboratively to care for high-risk patient panels. In this student-centered learning environment, trainees can learn traditional patient care, communication and medical knowledge objectives and work toward competence in a number of areas.

Didactics (monthly ECMH Grand Rounds) focus on nationally endorsed patient-centered medical home principles:

• Personal physician
• Team-based care
• Whole-person orientation
• Integrated/coordinated care
• Quality/safety commitment
• Enhanced access
• Payment reform

Each student in the ECMH will deliberately practice clinical care in accordance with these nationally endorsed principles, and their patient outcomes will be tracked and published across all ECMH sites to emphasize continuous quality improvement principles. 

Continuity is key within the ECMH. We aim to maximize continuity in these areas:

• Care, with longitudinal patient relationships
• Supervision, with preceptors and clinic staff
• Teamwork, with a stable peer group/team
• Data, a stable team working with a defined population enables outcome measurement

What does the ECMH bring to Feinberg?

• The opportunity to immediately raise the proportion of ambulatory education, as recommended by national education leaders
• The chance to embrace and build upon the national trend of longitudinal integrated clerkships
• The opportunity to be a leader among academic medical centers in meaningfully incorporating the PCMH model into undergraduate medical education, as called for by the leaders of AAP, AAFP and ACP
• The potential to be a center of excellence for undergraduate teaching of medical teamwork and healthcare quality
• A new pathway for students to achieve competence in systems-based practice and practice-based learning and improvement in an authentic, patient-centered context
• A positive impact on Feinberg’s social mission score by embedding up to 40 percent of the student body in underserved or primary care shortage communities throughout Chicago
• The opportunity to strengthen existing bonds with our community health partners, including federally-qualified health centers such as Erie Family Health and PCC Wellness
• The chance to showcase its interest in community health and commitment to Chicago's underserved