Boston—July 25, 2000—For the third summer, Tufts Health Care Institute (THCI), with support from the Federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Tufts Health Plan (THP), and the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), have collaborated to sponsor a seven week fellowship program to give medical students a behind-the-scenes look at the world of managed care.

THCI is a non-profit, independent organization founded five years ago, devoted to the education of physicians and health care professionals about the changing managed care environment. It was shortly after THCI was founded that it began its collaboration with AMSA, now in it’s 33^rd year of promoting meaningful community-service experiences that are intended to aid medical students move from the classroom into the "real world." With support of Tufts Health Plan, recently rated one of the best HMO’s in the country, this fellowship has evolved into a unique learning experience for all those involved.

For 7 weeks, 10 fellows split their workweeks between classroom learning and on the job experience. Class mornings bring all fellows together to interact with distinguished course faculty from not only the Tufts community, but also from such entities as Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, McKessonHBOC, Tufts-New England Medical Center and the Lahey Clinic. Topics such as Ethics, Utilization Management, and Serving the Underserved help fellows learn about the many aspects of health care and how intricately complex MCOs are. When the fellows are not in class they go to placement sites around Boston and apply their newfound knowledge in the real world.

Says current fellow Jeffrey Brabham of the University of Florida Medical School, "The AMSA/THCI Managed Care Fellowship has been an invaluable opportunity for me to observe the intricacies of a managed care organization firsthand. Managed care is often presented within medical education as a nasty word, consistently put down but rarely investigated or explained. This program has allowed me to move past this perspective to understand the theories and practices involved in different types of care management. While managed care organizations are by no means perfect systems, I can now appreciate the goals of managed care and how they should be approached, analyzed, and utilized within clinical practice."

Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center is a placement site for another fellow, who is promoting child and adult literacy, and will culminate in a day long ‘Literacy Fair’ will take place on August 2^nd. A third fellow is placed at Boston Health Care for the Homeless where he has created a database that describes the patient population, which will contribute to fine tuning the services offered. Another fellow at Tufts Health Plan is helping to determine factors to consider when measuring the quality of care given at the end of life.

To meet the fellows and learn more about their work, you are invited to their final presentation of these summer projects on Friday, August 4. For more information please call Kelly Blackburn at (617) 636-1000 for more information.