Implementing effective care management in the patient-centered medical home.

Background: There is growing evidence that practice-based care management can improve clinical quality and reduce costly healthcare utilization.

Objectives: To explore how a disparate group of patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) embedded care management in their team care environment to identify best practices.

Study Design: A positive deviance approach was used to contrast care management implementation in practices having the greatest and least improvement on clinical measures of diabetes, the initial target disease for a multipayer-supported statewide initiative involving 25 National Committee on Quality Assurance-recognized PCMH practices participating in a regional learning collaborative.