Development of a facilitation curriculum to support primary care transformation: the "coach medical home" curriculum.

Background: In an effort to improve patient care, retain high-quality primary care providers, and control costs, primary care practices across the United States are transforming to patient-centered medical homes. This is no small task. Practice facilitation, also called "coaching," is increasingly being used to support system change; however, there is limited guidance for these programs.

Objective: To develop an evidence-based curriculum to help practice coaches guide broad-scale transformation efforts in primary care.

Methods: We gathered evidence about effective practice transformation coaching from 25 published programs and 8 expert interviews. Given limited published information, we drew extensively on our experience as leaders and coaches in the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative. Using these data, and with input from a User Group, we identified 6 curricular topics and created learning objectives and curricular content related to these topics.

Results: The Coach Medical Home curriculum guides coaches in the following areas: getting started with a practice; recognition and payment; sequencing changes; measurement; learning communities; and sustainability and spread.

Conclusions: Coach Medical Home is a publically available web-based curriculum that provides tools, resources, and guidance for practice transformation support programs, including practice facilitators and learning community organizers.