Boston, MA - (June 24, 2002) - Tufts Health Care Institute (THCI), a leading, non-profit, independent provider of educational and training programs on care management for physicians and other health care professionals, today announced that it is co-hosting a major conference on new physician training requirements with Partnerships for Quality Education (PQE).

Focused on helping teaching hospitals educate physicians in the areas of systems-based practice and practice-based learning and improvement, the conference, entitled “Are You Ready? Practical Approaches for Achieving Required Competencies in Systems-Based Practice and Practice-Based Learning and Improvement,” will be held September 26-28 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Medical education in the United States is undergoing a revolution,” said THCI Executive Director Rosalie Phillips. “No longer is it sufficient for physicians to be expert in the diagnosis and treatment of illness. In order to provide the best care possible to their patients, physicians must also know how to function within a complex health care delivery system to improve health outcomes, enhance patient safety, and manage costs.”

The driving force behind the September conference is new requirements from the ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education), which is responsible for the accreditation of all residency training programs within the U.S.

Among other directives, the ACGME now requires that all training programs teach and demonstrate trainee competence in two new categories: systems-based practice and practice-based learning and improvement. In addition, guidelines from the American Board of Medical Specialties on maintenance of certification also require assessment of the same set of general competencies.

Systems-based practice relates to understanding the larger context and system of health care and mobilizing resources of that system on behalf of patients, while practice-based learning and improvement focuses on enhancing patient care through understanding and applying evidence-based medicine, quality assessment and improvement, information technology, and population-based care.

“Those who train new doctors and other health professionals are expected to teach them to practice in a rapidly evolving, complex health care delivery system that is focusing on health care outcomes. Medical education must in turn focus on desired outcomes and competencies as well,” said PQE Director Dr. Gordon T. Moore. “Our conference will prepare them to do that.”

Speaking at the conference will be:

• David Leach, MD, executive director of ACGME;
  
  
• Harvey Fineberg, MD, president of the Institute of Medicine;
  
  
• Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH, senior natural scientist and the Paul O’Neill Alcoa professor, RAND Corporation;
  
  
• Ronald Epstein, MD, director of pre-doctoral medical education, University of Rochester; and
  
  
• Colleen Conway-Welch, PhD, CNM, FAAN, dean and professor, Vanderbilt School of Nursing.

The ACGME mandates impact a significant number of students, trainees, and faculty in the US:

• In 2001, there were 66,253 students enrolled in 125 US medical schools.
  
  
• In 2002, approximately 8,000 residency programs at 1,655 sites trained more than 100,000 resident physicians.
  
  
• More than 100,000 faculty members are employed by or affiliated with physician teaching and training programs.

Registration and conference information can be found at www.thci.org/prog_serv_prod/9_02ReqCompConf.html.

About Partnerships For Quality Education

Partnerships for Quality Education (www.pge.org), an initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, founded in 1996, is a grant program to support models for education in managing care. PQE focuses on residency and nurse practitioner education, and supports the preparation of trainees for collaborative interprofessional practice. PQE programs include: the Partnerships Program; the Collaborative Interprofessional Team Education (CITE) initiative; Take Care to Learn: Teaching Clinical Care Management; and Future-Oriented Redesign of Clinical Education (FORCE).

About The Tufts Health Care Institute

Established in 1995, Tufts Health Care Institute, a not-for-profit, educational organization, is a leading independent source of educational and training programs on systems-based practice and care management for the health professions. THCI provides practical teaching materials, including online learning and assessment tools, and regularly hosts faculty development conferences, summits, and workshops to support the training of clinicians to meet the goals of regulatory groups, such those of the ACGME, in a timely, cost-effective manner.