Portage Health Gets Recognition

HANCOCK – The effort of Portage Health over the past two years was rewarded this week as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan designated three Portage Health clinics as patient-centered medical home (PCMH) clinics.

“This is a program we’ve been heavily focused on since 2009,” said Dr. Kirk Lufkin, chief medical officer at Portage Health. “Nothing like this happens without a massive group effort.”

Portage Health Pediatrics, Hancock Family Practice and Houghton Family Practice (located in the University Center location) all received the designation.

“Each of these clinics showed tremendous improvement in the PCMH mission over the last year,” said Lufkin, who credited much of the change to electronic medical records. “We did well because of our transition to the EMR. It’s an incredibly powerful tool and we’re still in the early stages with it.”

The electronic medical records will allow doctors to easily see who needs preventative measures such as mammograms, and then easily contact those patients.

To earn the (PCMH) designation, Portage Health primary care clinics, focused on a checklist of 126 capabilities, while also having to meet performance measures determined by Blue Cross Blue Shield.

“This designation is a huge success story for Portage Health and the entire community,” Lufkin said. “The more things like this that we do, the healthier our community is and the stronger local healthcare can become.”

Portage Health Pediatrics includes Anas Jaber, MD, Rajanee Sripaipan, MD and Colleen Vallad-Hix, DO. The Hancock Family Practice includes William Anderson, MD, David Kass, MD, Doug McKenzie, MD, Mercedes Maki, PA and Cynthia Blake, NP. The Houghton Family Practice includes Audrey Liston, DO, Allison Helman, DO, Bruce Trusock, MD and Melissa Becker, PA.

For more information about patient-centered medical home visit portagehealth.org/pcmh.