This Commonwealth Fund report examines the relationship between medical practices’ costs and medical home activities, finding that medical homes were associated with modest information technology cost increases, but no other additional costs.  However, the authors acknowledge that the absence of a clear association between the level of medical home implementation and practice cost may stem from data limitations or an insufficient definition of “medical home”.

From the Executive Summary:

Based on data from the 35 practices in the final analysis sample, we found no evidence of additional costs associated with higher levels of MH activity; our estimates suggested that there was less than a $1-per-month difference in patient costs between the third of study practices with the highest PPC-PCMH scores (which measure MH intensity) and those in the middle and lower thirds. The average total cost per full-time-equivalent (FTE) physician was $517,000 for all 35 practices. Although the mean total cost per FTE physician increased slightly across the three score categories, the Low and High means were within one standard error of one another, meaning that the differences were not statistically significant. Support staff costs exhibited a similar pattern.

Full report: Incremental Cost Savings for the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PDF | 685 KB)

The Commonwealth Fund. (2009). Incremental cost estimates for the patient-centered medical home. Zuckerman, S., Merrell, K., Berenson, R., Gans, D., Underwood, W., Williams, A., Erickson, S. & Hammons, T.