Every child deserves a medical home. The primary care physician assumes the role of a medical home by offering care that is accessible, coordinated, comprehensive, continuous, culturally effective, and compassionate. As the point of initial contact for child health medical services, the medical home physician is in a unique position to offer comprehensive health care through preventive, child health supervision visits, in addition to treating acute and chronic illnesses. The basic functions and role of the medical home are established when the primary care physician builds a partnership and mutual-trusting relationship with the child and family through periodic visits from infancy through young adulthood.[1]

The concept of the medical home is especially applicable to the care of children with special health care needs (CSHCN) and chronic disabling conditions. As defined by Maternal Child Health Bureau and adopted by the American Academy of Pediatrics, CSHCN are defined as those who have or who are at increased risk for a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition and who also require health and related services of a type or amount generally beyond that required by most typically developing children.[2] These children include those at risk or who have conditions principally the result of biological reasons (eg, genetic conditions such as trisomy 21 or phenylketonuria), those at risk or with difficulties principally the result of their environmental or socioeconomic context (eg, prematurity, children growing up in poverty), and those who have or who are at risk for conditions caused by a combination of biological, environmental, or psychosocial factors (eg, children growing up in families affected by parental mental illness, domestic violence, or substance abuse). Chronic conditions may include asthma, diabetes mellitus, or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.