POPULATION HEALTH: Medical home staffing benchmarks

I was intrigued by a footnote in a current article and followed it to this study published a couple of years ago.  The authors surveyed nine medical practice administrators who had experience with the medical home model.  They developed the following PROPOSED staffing ratios for a patient-centered medical home.

Staff FTEs / 1 Physician FTE (with a provider panel of 2,150)

• 1.42 clerical
• 1.33 RN, Medical assistant, Tech, LPN
• 0.4  RN care manager
• 0.25 Nurse practitioner/physician assistant
• 0.25 health coach
• 0.25 social work and mental health providers
• 0.2  pharmacist
• 0.1  nutritionist
• 0.05 clinical data analyst
• 4.25 TOTAL OF THE ABOVE

Note: The numbers that I report above are a little different from what you are going to see in the published article.  There was an error in some of the line items in Table 2 in the published article.  I contacted the author, Dr. Mitesh Patel, who sent me a corrected table.

Source: Patel, M.S., Arron, M.J., and others. (2013, June). Estimating the staffing infrastructure for a patient-centered medical home. American Journal of Managed Care, 19(6), 509-516. Retrieved from http://www.ajmc.com/journals/issue/2013/2013-1-vol19-n6/Estimating-the-Staffing-Infrastructure-for-a-Patient-Centered-Medical-Home/  Posted by AHA Resource Center (312) 422-2050, rc@aha.org