Patrick Dolan, MD, Physician Champion for Quality at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital, and Helene Brooks, Director of Strategic Alliances at the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), discuss how partnership and collaboration among clinicians, societies, and ABMS Member Boards can facilitate quality improvement (QI). Dr. Dolan describes the Pediatric Readiness Quality Collaborative’s QI initiative to address variability in pediatric emergency care at Comer Children’s and other facilities throughout Illinois. The physicians implemented guidelines and best practices developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Emergency Physicians, and Emergency Nurses Association. The Member Boards collaborated with the societies during project planning and implementation to ensure it would qualify for continuing certification credit for board certified physicians who engaged in this QI initiative. ABIM has worked closely with the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American College of Cardiology to develop Collaborative Maintenance Pathways that more closely mirror physicians’ practices and interests. For example, in 2020, pathways in Medical Oncology for General Oncology, Breast Cancer and Hematologic Malignancies are available with additional options expected in 2022. Ms. Brooks also discusses best practices for working with societies.
TRANSCRIPT:
Helene Brooks: The American Board of Internal Medicine is the largest member board and so we have the largest amount of society partners and it’s been very important to us to maintain those positive relationships and find ways to work together to benefit our diplomates and society members
Patrick Dolan, MD: The pediatric readiness poly collaborative at Comer Children’s Hospital is working with societies. The collaborative that was formed by a joint venture by the American Academy of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine for Children. What we’re doing is working together by implementing their guidance at our facility and other facilities throughout the state.
Brooks: The American Board of Internal Medicine has been working closely with the American Society of Clinical Oncology to develop of maintenance pathway through our own assessments on taking our knowledge check in really creating specialization so in 2020 there will be three opportunities: breast cancer, hematologic malignancies, and general oncology, that diplomates can choose from to meet their assessment requirements.
Dolan: Diplomates address abnormal vitals for our patients prior to them being discharged. We were also able to address for the providers an alert system that they were able to see in case there was a missing vital or there was an abnormal vital that they hadn’t had a chance to address prior to discharge.
Brooks: Some of the best practices for engaging in collaborative maintenance partnerships with our society partners have been communicating together effectively, owning each other’s problems, keeping our populations informed of the changes that are coming to ensure that we had a pathway that benefits those our diplomates as well as our organization.
Dolan: The Societies, the providers, and the boards were able to work together with this project by the providers identifying a need, the society building the clinical care guideline for those needs then the providers implementing that guideline and lastly because it’s a multi-specialty project the boards were able to give maintenance of certification credit for that quality improvement initiative.
