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Christine C. Matson, M.D. |
Message from the Chair
These are challenging times for health
care, with dramatic disparities in access to and outcomes of care,
increasing numbers of individuals without health insurance and a
reimbursement system with significant inequity in rewarding
contributions to population health.
Family physicians have a critical
role in providing personalized care, advocacy and pathfinding that
patients need in the complex maze of health-care delivery. We also have
the responsibility with our colleagues in other disciplines to
restructure our processes of care to more effectively address lifestyle
issues that contribute to a high prevalence of chronic disease, and to
choose the full breadth of therapies that are in the best interests of
our patients.
We are now on the brink of measuring
quality as a routine part of the process of care, with electronic
medical records. The Department of Family and Community Medicine at EVMS
has provided leadership within the school in the transition to
electronic record-keeping, as the pilot site for implementation and the
first department to incorporate resident physicians in its use in
ambulatory care, leading in the linkage of the electronic record with
quality measurement and improvement.
Largely because of progress in our
residencies, we are now a national demonstration site for our electronic
record provider. Residents are part of this endeavor, as they work with
faculty on progressive implementation of the system for optimal patient
care, and to develop the most effective methods for training new
residents to use and improve the system.
During this academic year, residents in
the department will be part of implementing other aspects of the New
Model of family medicine in addition to the electronic medical record,
as envisioned in the Future of
Family Medicine (FFM). These include new models for patient support
and practice efficiency: the group prenatal visit and the group medical
visit; and for communication with patients, the patient portal.
Residents' quality improvement projects will help to point the way
toward new ways of improving health outcomes for our patients. The FFM
task force on education advocated flexibility in curriculum and
scheduling for residency education, of which our 10-year-old, 4-year
Combined Family Medicine/Internal Medicine residency program is a
current model; our proposed 4-year Early Start (beginning in fourth
year of medical school) FM residency program is another example.
The EVMS Department of Family and
Community Medicine offers three distinctive residency programs,
including the family medicine programs at Ghent and Portsmouth; and the
Combined Family Medicine/Internal medicine program, for which the
continuity patient site is Ghent. The programs share faculty resources,
including overlap in their core curriculum didactic series and faculty
expertise in areas such as the EHR, quality improvement, geriatrics,
women's health, procedural skills, behavioral medicine, clinical
pharmacy, community service-learning opportunities and multiple other FM
content areas; and the family medicine obstetrics program at the
Portsmouth Health Department and Maryview Medical Center. These shared
strengths and the programs' unique approaches combine to produce
exceptional educational options for candidates who want to prepare for
leadership as competent and compassionate family physicians in the
future of medicine.
Christine C. Matson, M.D.
George R. Mitchell Chair,
EVMS Department of Family and Community Medicine
October 2006 |
