Reflections on Two Plenaries

In the past two weeks I traveled to Chicago twice to deliver two plenary talks on topics of great concern to the faculty and students of the Jefferson School of Population Health. On June 3rd, at the Association of American Medical Colleges Second Annual Meeting on Integrating Quality (IQ)into the Medical College Curriculum I admonished the representatives from more than 60 medical colleges to train the trainers---get faculty fired up about quality and safety and then let them train the house officers and medical students. The shortage of appropriately trained faculty in our field is the rate limiting step to getting the tenets of quality and safety more securely into the modern curriculum.

On June 10, at the Annual Meeting of the Facutly Practice Solutions Center of the University Healthsystem Consortium, I urged Practice Plan leaders from across the country to prepare now for health reform in the ambulatory arena. This means helping physicians from every clinical department to measure and evaluate the quality and safety of the care they deliver in the office setting. I envision that health reform as it relates to the office practice of medicine will mean ---No outcome, No income!! That is, doctors will be paid when we reach our evidence based clinical goals, and if we fail, we will be paid less or not at all. A brave new world for all of us.

The Jefferson School of Population Health, and its faculty and staff, are recognized leaders in medical school curriculum reform and preparing clinical faculty for the realities of a payment system based on clinical accountability. These two issues are among many that we are busily researching,analyzing and speaking about.

How is your organization tackling curricular reform and preparing for practice under the new bill?? What innovative approaches are you using and what can we all learn from one another??