The medical home: is it a blind men and elephant tale?

In John Godfrey Saxe’s poetic version of the classic Indian tale, six blind men each touched different parts of an elephant and came to completely different conclusions of what this animal was like. He and others have used this tale to ridicule those who are overconfident that their perspective is correct. Current discussions about the medical home can easily seem to be yet another example of this tale, both within one country and among those with differing health care systems. But is it? In this commentary, we describe some of those different perspectives in the USA and in some European countries and try to determine if there is indeed a real animal beneath those perspectives.