Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) is honored to be one of 11 schools selected to receive a $1 Million grant from the American Medical Association – Accelerating Change in Medical Education (AMA-ACE) grant program. Working with the Regenstrief Institute (a medical informatics research organization) and with enthusiastic support from our health systems partners (Eskenazi Health and Indiana University Health), we have created a teaching electronic medical record populated by 10,000 deidentified patient records to use as a learning lab.
Healthcare is no longer typically provided by a heroic physician visiting his patient and carrying a doctor’s bag of curatives. Medicine in the 21st century is a team effort with a range of professionals collaborating to select from a bewildering array of high tech diagnostics and therapeutics. Providing care requires knowledge of healthcare finance, quality improvement, and patient safety principles in addition to skills such as navigating electronic medical records.
Because US medical school graduates are ill prepared for the complex world they will practice in, the IUSM AMA-ACE grant project will:
- Advance faculty competence and confidence as educators in systems based practice so that they can prepare students to
- Engage in healthcare with quality focused inter-professional teams to
- Harness the power of data to improve the health of patients, practices and populations
To accomplish these goals, we have initiated curricular innovation for students. A critical element of this project is the Jump Start faculty development program created to strengthen our faculty’s knowledge and skills in systems based practice. We have recruited 32 Quality Systems Coaches (QSCs) statewide to serve as facilitators for our students at our 9 campuses.
The Office of Faculty Affairs and Professional Development is collaborating with the Office of Undergraduate Medical Education to provide immersion learning. QSCs will participate in 2 full day retreats, complete 12 online modules that include an overview of the healthcare system and workforce issues, mechanisms for cost control, access to care, population health, medical ethics and rationing, quality improvement, patient safety and student development theory. They will have systems-immersion opportunities with health care system leaders (e.g. CEO, CFO, and CIO) that will include a project with these leaders. This program started January 26, 2015 with the first retreat for QSCs who will begin to deliver the curriculum to second year students in August 2015. We are now designing the curriculum for the third year student component of our grant, which will be implemented in 2016.
We are fortunate to have the engagement of leaders such as the Vice President for System Quality and Safety facilitating the integration of our faculty into their regional health systems. Since we are teaching new content, we have also developed innovative assessments. Part of the Jump Start program is training with our tools to ensure an equivalent experience for our learners across the state. QSCs who complete the Jump Start program earn CME, a certificate in Medical Informatics for Teaching Quality from the Regenstrief Institute, and 4 credits in our Academy of Teaching Scholars program.
