Medical Home

The Wisconsin Medical Home Initiative is dedicated to promoting the concepts of medical home for primary care clinicians, families and service providers throughout Wisconsin.

A medical home is a trusting partnership between you, your child, and your pediatric primary health care team. A medical home means that your health care team:

  • Knows your child’s health history
  • Listens to your concerns and needs (as well as your child’s)
  • Treats your child with compassion
  • Has an understanding of their strengths
  • Develops a care plan with you and your child when needed
  • Respects and honors your culture and traditions

Your health care team can help you and your child access and coordinate specialty care, other health care and educational services, in and out of home care, family support, and other public/private community services that are important to the overall well-being of you and your child.

To help you better understand the medical home; please visit one of these resources:

  • Well-Visit Planner-A great tool for your next visit with your child’s physician ! In about 10 minutes or less you can get a personalized, printable Well-Visit Guide that you can present to your physician.  The guide helps you remember the important issues you want to talk to your physician about and they can keep a copy in their file to do a check-in with you at your next visit.
  • Wisconsin Medical Home Initiative  Dedicated to promoting the concepts of medical home for primary care clinicians, families and service providers throughout Wisconsin. Their website provides up to date information on efforts in Wisconsin.
  • The National Center for Medical Home Implementation  An excellent web resource for health professionals and families.
  • The Patient at Risk Program Wisconsin has more than 200,000 children with special health care needs. Many EMS providers have very limited pediatric experience responding to children with special needs in emergencies. EMS providers and responders could be better prepared to handle our medically fragile children if they know critical information before arriving on the scene. The Patient At Risk Program is an online database that allows families to enter specific information regarding their child to alert first responders about crucial medical information when an emergency call is placed.
  • What is a Medical Home?
    To help families and other partners better understand the concept of a medical home, a Wisconsin-specific brochure has been developed. Sections of the brochure include a definition of a medical home, family responsibilities, health care team responsibilities and Wisconsin-specific resources for families of children with special health care needs. Organizations may customize the brochure by adding their logo and contact information.
    Medical Home Brochure Cover
  • National Center for Family/Professional Partnerships
    The goal of the NCFPP, led by Family Voices National, is to help ensure families of children/youth with special health care needs partner at all levels of health care decision-making.
  • Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care
    The Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care provides essential leadership to advance the understanding and practice of patient- and family-centered care in all settings where individuals and families receive health care.
  • National Center for Cultural Competence
    Increase the capacity of health care and mental health care programs to design, implement, and evaluate culturally and linguistically competent service delivery systems to address growing diversity, persistent disparities, and to promote health and mental health equity.

Please ask your child’s doctor or contact the regional center at 800-532-3321 or cyshcn@waisman.wisc.edu if you have any questions about medical home or are unsure which doctor or health system is your child’s medical home.