A new “Health Systems Science” textbook focuses on the changing dynamics of healthcare delivery
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. Repertoire reported on these initiatives through 2016. Recently, the AMA released a textbook to help future physicians navigate the changes ahead of them.
The American Medical Association has launched a new health systems textbook designed to help physicians navigate the changing landscape of modern healthcare. The textbook – parts of which are already in use in medical schools across the country – comes out as the nation’s healthcare system moves toward value-based care.
“We know that the way healthcare is being delivered is changing, but until now those changes have not been widely incorporated into the way we teach our physicians,” said AMA CEO James L. Madara, M.D. “Our medical schools are very good at preparing students for the basic and clinical sciences that are paramount to providing care to patients, but what is largely missing is how to deliver that care in a complex health system.”
The AMA collaborated with its 32-school Consortium to identify the innovations needed to create the medical school of the future. “Health Systems Science” emerged as the third pillar of medical education that should be integrated with the two existing pillars – basic and clinical sciences. Together, the AMA and the 11 founding Consortium schools wrote a textbook to formalize this concept to help medical schools across the country teach their students the knowledge, skills and behaviors they will need to deliver care in the rapidly changing healthcare environment while also understanding how patients receive and access that care.
Focus on value, safety, quality
The new “Health Systems Science” textbook focuses on value in healthcare, patient safety, quality improvement, teamwork and team science, leadership, clinical informatics, population health, socio-ecological determinants of health, healthcare policy and health care economics. Many schools within the Consortium – including Penn State College of Medicine and Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School – have already begun implementing Health Systems Science into their curricula and will soon use the textbook with their students.
Penn State College of Medicine launched its Systems Navigation in August 2014, thanks in part to a $1 million grant from the AMA. Penn State collaborated with its health system leaders to design the new curriculum to meet the needs of the health system. The program, which embeds first-year medical students working as patient navigators in clinical sites throughout central Pennsylvania, was created to ensure students learn not only the basic and clinical sciences, but also health systems science. This is an important innovation given that the majority of medical students still receive their training in hospital settings despite the fact that the majority of patients are now being cared for in outpatient settings to treat chronic conditions.
Brown University, which also received a $1 million AMA grant to support its curriculum transformation, created its Primary Care-Population Medicine program, awarding graduates both a Doctor of Medicine and a Master of Science in Population Medicine. The program is designed to develop physicians who, with training focused on population health, can be future leaders in community-based primary care at the local, state or national level.
Both Penn State and Brown have received advanced chapters of the new “Health Systems Science” textbook, and it was scheduled to be available to all medical schools in mid-December. The textbook, published by Elsevier, will serve as a platform from which the Consortium schools will build additional Health Systems Science tools and innovations that can be shared throughout the nation’s medical schools.
“Our goal is to enable all medical schools across the country, not just those working with the AMA’s Consortium, to access this innovative work and the Consortium’s expertise to make sure their students become physicians who understand how patients receive and access care in today’s health care systems,” said AMA Vice President for Medical Education Outcomes Susan E. Skochelak, M.D.