According to the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), the Annals of Internal Medicine has published a very timely 5-year longitudinal cohort study of primary care practices from the Taconic Independence Practice Association in New York’s Hudson Valley that achieved Level 3 status on the NCQA 2008 Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) standards. The study collected extensive data on quality measures and utilization of care, and was done in collaboration with 6 health plans, initially focusing on a set of 8 ambulatory care quality measures from HEDIS. However, over time, “clinical transformation needed to achieve changes in health care utilization” became a greater priority. In the final year of the study (2012), the PCMH practices demonstrated modest and statistically significant differences in the rate of change compared to the two control groups on 6 of 7 utilization measures: 7-9% more primary care visits; 10% fewer specialty visits; 4-8% fewer laboratory tests; 4-8% fewer radiologic tests; 21-23% fewer hospitalizations and 57-60% fewer re-hospitalizations for every 100 patients. Only the rate of ED visits did not improve relative to the control groups.  Read more information here.