Early evidence indicates that patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) may be great for patients and beneficial to primary-care physicians and insurers—but not as favorable for hospitals because of reduced inpatient admissions. The good news for pathologist and clinical laboratory is a medical home program appears to improve utilization of medical laboratory tests.

The basic idea behind the concept to the medical home is to centralize care around a primary-care physician. This primary-care physician manages an integrated team of acute, chronic, preventative, and end-of-life specialists so as to provide patients with personalized care. Data from the first medical home pilot projects indicates that one outcome of a medical home programs is that fewer patients need hospital in-patient care.