The Medical Home Portal provides a one-stop-shop for information related to supporting children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) and their families in its partner states – each with their own Medical Home Portal site that includes a directory of relevant service providers in their state (or region), along with the content and resources found on all of the states’ and the Nationwide sites:

• Information and resources for families about caring and advocating for CYSHCN from birth through transition-to-adulthood;
• Detailed information and tools to help clinicians care for children with any of over 80 diagnoses/conditions and responding to positive newborn screening tests;
• Information and resources to support clinicians and parents in partnering to improve care and outcomes for CYSHCN in the Medical Home model.

Learn more About the Medical Home Portal and read A Short History of the Medical Home Portal.

The Medical Home Portal will be a robust shared resource for your state’s CYSHCN and their families, their clinicians, and other professionals. Your state portal will have a custom domain (e.g., nm.medicalhomeportal.org) with state-specific content (more details below) and individual usage metrics. Your state’s Portal will:

• House a directory of local (and nationwide) community and professional service providers for CYSHCN and their families;
• Include links to information about relevant service providers from content pages within your Portal site;
• Link to resources developed by state or local agencies or specific to your state;
• Include state-specific narrative content;
• Support residents creating and sharing basic custom lists of service providers;
• Provide a framework for enhancing collaboration with your state’s Family to Family Health Information Center;
• Provide a framework for enhancing coordination of care for CYSHCN by care coordinators in primary care practices, insurance companies, and other settings;
• Receive ongoing marketing support from the Portal’s staff, including assistance with strategy, materials, and presentations
• Offer you a seat on the Portal’s Advisory Board, through which you will receive regular updates on Portal progress, contribute ideas, guide ongoing improvements, and support its spread and sustainability
• Provide you and your staff with initial training and ongoing support for acquiring, maintaining, and improving information for your state’s Services Directory.

Key steps to building a successful partnership with the Portal:

• Identify an organization or agency that could sponsor your state’s Portal, such as your state’s Title V agency (see State Title V Profiles and Contacts);
• Identify additional organizations that might be stakeholders in efforts to develop and maintain content and services information, such as the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics Chapter List), your University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD, see UCEDD Directory), or other agencies/organizations that care about children and families;
• Contact us for more information, assistance, and guidance – contact the Services Support Manager at partners@medicalhomeportal.org.

A 2-1-1 Information and Referral organization, responsible for maintaining information on community health and human services, may be an excellent place to start – find your local 2-1-1 at 2-1-1 North America.

Some partner states gather and maintain local services data themselves, utilize directories created by other state organizations, or collaborate with other Information and Referral programs. The Portal's team will work with you to identify the options, determine the best approach for your state, and resolve any technical problems with database imports.

Initially developed in and for Utah, the Portal was reprogrammed, with support from a National Library of Medicine grant (1 G08 LM007680-01A2) and a Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) Quality Demonstrations grant (1Z0C030547-01-0), to enable sharing its content with other states and regions around the country. Our current partner state sites are:

• Nevada, supported by the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, Title V Maternal and Child Health Program
• New Mexico, supported by the Children’s Medical Services/Children with Special Needs, New Mexico Department of Health and University of New Mexico Center for Development and Disability
• Rhode Island, supported by the Rhode Island Title V/Maternal and Child Health Program
• Utah, supported by the Utah Utah Maternal and Child Health Bureau (UDHHS)

If you are interested in partnering with the Portal, or just want more information, please contact us by using the Feedback form or by emailing info@medicalhomeportal.org.