By David Thill
With an emphasis on community- and value-based care, Ohio University’s Heritage College of Medicine aims to produce primary care physician leaders.
Editor’s note: Sensing a gap between how physicians are educated and the future needs of the U.S. healthcare system, the American Medical Association in 2013 launched its “Accelerating Change in Medical Education” initiative. The association awarded grants to 11 medical schools to fund selected innovations in medical education, and then expanded the program in 2015 to an additional 21 schools. Here’s a look at one program shaping tomorrow’s physicians – and Repertoire readers’ customers of tomorrow.
“Patients don’t want healthcare; they want health,” says Isaac Kirstein, D.O., dean of the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Cleveland campus. In 2015, Heritage College became one of 32 medical schools – and one of three osteopathic colleges – to join the American Medical Association’s “Accelerating Change in Medical Education” consortium. Its “transformative care” curriculum, set to welcome its first class in the fall of 2018, offers an accelerated medical education that trains primary care physician leaders specializing in value-based care.
Adapting to change
With healthcare reform initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act and the integration of health systems, “We have to train medical students to be adaptable” to ongoing quick changes in healthcare, says Kirstein. These reforms are also creating a need for more primary care physicians, which is what Kirstein and his colleagues hope the transformative care curriculum produces.
Students accepted into the program will commit to primary care from the beginning of their education, which lasts six years including residency, as opposed to the traditional seven. Kirstein notes that the shorter curriculum, which means a year less of tuition payments for students, is also more efficient.
Participants spend three years in training, and are automatically matched to a three-year family residency program at the Cleveland Clinic health system – the Heritage College’s major affiliate at the Cleveland campus. By the time they complete the program, students will have spent six years serving the clinic’s patients, with the option of continuing practice there.
The curriculum emphasizes value-based care, a major part of healthcare reform. On top of a payment model shifting to reflect this concept, “we have a moral imperative to keep [communities] healthy,” and to treat them when they’re sick, says Kirstein. In the community-centered, team-based approach to healthcare, he predicts seeing healthier patients. “Health outcomes are better when patients have access to a primary care team.”
While health systems are adapting to changing models, “we’re not there yet.” The next step is to train physician leaders. From the beginning of their education, students in the transformative care curriculum will take part in Cleveland Clinic’s leadership programs to learn how to communicate effectively with patients and with medical teams.
“We’re trying to create a new kind of primary care doctor, [specializing] in team-based care in the community.”
A public-private partnership
The process of implementing the new curriculum began with a question from Kirstein’s team to the Cleveland Clinic: “What is your vision of the ideal community-based physician?” With the clinic’s input, as well as that of several community-based medical programs in the area – and their experience taking part in the AMA’s consortium – the Heritage College team plans to bring all aspects together when the first class of eight students begins their training in the transformative care curriculum two years from now. While recruitment will officially begin at the end of 2016, the college has already heard from interested prospective students. “We want physicians who look like the communities they’re serving,” he explains: a diverse group that comes from a diverse array of backgrounds, broader than just the basic sciences.
The curriculum, bringing together Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic, “is a great example of a public-private partnership,” says Kirstein. “It’s an example of how we can bring the resources of a public university to partner with a private [health] system that helps the community and citizens of Ohio.”
David Thill is a contributing editor for Repertoire.