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A health care effort focused on preventive medicine and a team approach to treatment is showing promise improving care and reducing costs, state officials say.

The Health Care Homes initiative has increased patient access to clinics, particularly for people of color, while improving quality and coordination of care, according to a state study released Thursday.

Health Care Homes is not home health care. The idea is to change the way clinics provide care from a traditional, illness-based model, to one that strives to improve the health of patients with chronic conditions and disabilities.

Clinics can receive extra payments for their efforts. At the same time, the program is intended to reduce health care spending enough to cover its own costs.

In the first three years of the program, Minnesota has certified 322 primary care clinics as health care homes. That's about 43 percent of eligible family practice clinics in the state.

Besides lowering costs, Health Care Homes clinics outpaced other clinics on quality metrics such as asthma care and colorectal cancer screening, officials said.

"What you're seeing here is that the care is better for those individuals who are enrolled in a health care home," said Doug Wholey, who led the University of Minnesota team that evaluated Health Care Homes for the Legislature.

"Health Care Homes had higher overall quality of care for diabetes care, vascular care, asthma care and colorectal cancer screening," Wholey told reporters. Clinics that were certified as Health Care Homes scored better than non-certified clinics on a number of quality measures, he added.

The rate of appropriate asthma care was approximately 20 percent higher among Health Care Homes clinics than it was for uncertified clinics. Screening for colorectal cancer was 8 percent higher in Health Care Homes. And blood vessel care scored 4 to 8 percent higher. The results were all statistically significant.

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Study: New health program shows promise