On the right road?

From the Forbes article:

Patrick Soon-Shiong, a self-made billionaire through injectable and breakthrough nanoparticle anticancer technology drug development, is now focusing his philanthropic efforts on creating a national highway for health care.
...
The idea is to create a health grid that empowers the patient and the provider. This should be a public utility, basically what I call a U.S. public health grid.

Click here to read more.

Macy Foundation on "Developing a Strong Primary Care Workforce"

From the publication:

The United States does not have enough health professionals in primary care to meet the anticipated demand. To have any hope of meeting that demand, major changes in the education and reimbursement for primary care professionals will be required. Any effort at healthcare reform must place healthcare workforce issues front and center.

In April 2009, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation convened a meeting in Washington, DC, to discuss the nation’s healthcare workforce. Individuals representing four organizations with expertise in primary care and prevention were in attendance. These professionals work in the trenches of primary care, representing groups that recruit high school and college students into the health professions, nudge medical education toward a greater appreciation of primary care, and guide training for physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and others on the front lines of healthcare delivery. Their insights are compelling.

To read this publication (which is a summary of the meeting), click here.

Open access KT article

Click here to access "Riding the knowledge translation roundabout: lessons learned from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Summer Institute in knowledge translation" (just published in the online journal Implementation Science). A key lesson learned is that knowledge translation "is interdisciplinary and collaborative".

New guidelines to reduce side effects of NSAIDs

From the Washington Post article:

Three leading medical associations have created guidelines to help heart disease patients cut their risk of ulcers and gastrointestinal bleeding from the condition's most common treatments -- antiplatelets and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin.

The American College of Cardiology, the American College of Gastroenterology and the American Heart Association guidelines call on doctors to better assess the patient's risk factors before treatment starts.

Click here to access.

SACME and NAAMECC release "joint" assessment tool

What's it used for?...to assess potential joint sponsors. Click here to access.

Epocrates and Joslin Launch Mobile Resource Center on Diabetes

From the Epocrates press release:

Clinicians across America now have access to the knowledge and opinions of a renowned diabetes expert, thanks to a collaboration between Joslin Diabetes Center, the world’s largest diabetes clinic, research center and provider of diabetes education, and Epocrates Inc., a leading developer of handheld clinical applications.

Richard Jackson, M.D., Director of Medical Affairs, Healthcare Services, Joslin Diabetes Center, is the sole contributing editor for Epocrates' new diabetes mobile resource center. This convenient handheld resource is designed to provide an intelligent, editorially independent summary of the most important clinical news and research in diabetes.

With diabetes rates on the rise among Americans and the influx of medical news and developments, clinicians need a trusted source to help them sort through the clutter and keep current. The mobile resource center’s content, including scientific articles, research findings and breaking news, is selected and commented upon by Dr. Jackson to support clinicians' care of patients with diabetes and its related conditions.

Click here to read the entire press release.

Continuing Education Alliance Wins Award from California Medical Association

From the press release:

After only three years as a continuing medical educational (CME) non-profit, Continuing Education Alliance has received the California Medical Association’s first Cultural and Linguistic Competency Award for Excellence in a CME Activity. The award was presented at the annual CME provider conference in San Francisco on Friday, May 11, attended by over 260 accredited providers from throughout California.
Continuing Education Alliance received this award for the original concept and development of a CME activity, “Cross Cultural Considerations at End of Life” presented by Dr. Stephen Oppenheim, medical director of San Diego Hospice. This CME is an interactive discussion of multiple case studies showing effective end-of-life treatment, pain management, and communication strategies for patients of diverse religious, linguistic and/or cultural backgrounds.

Following the initial presentation of this activity at Continuing Education Alliance’s monthly meeting in September 2006, the course was offered to area hospitals. Two hospitals in San Diego, Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla and Sharp Grossmont Hospital, presented this activity to their staff physicians in 2006 and other hospitals in San Diego have asked for more information about including “Cross Cultural Considerations in End of Life Care” in their 2007 schedule.

Kudos to CEA! Jenell Hollett, President of CEA, is a collaborator extraordinaire; CME Providers interested in learning more about this CME activity or CEA can contact her at:

Continuing Education Alliance
4403 Manchester Ave, Ste 103
Encinitas CA 92024
Telephone# 760.633.4160

Disclosure: I have provided consulting services to CEA on accreditation issues.

"150 consecutive daily entries on innovation"

Be certain to check out Doctor Reece's blog on medical innovations! Wednesday, May 9, 2007 marks 150 entries -- maybe you will read something you will want to put into practice. Click here to access his blog.

Smart tool aids in triage of emergency room patients

Do patient-centered (or "centred" as they spell it in Canada) information systems assist in the triage of Emergency Room patients? The Scarborough Hospital, Canada's largest urban community hospital, and Canada Health Infoway have launched such a new system:

The user-friendly kiosks are available in English, but will also feature interfaces in seven different languages including English, French, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Tamil, Punjabi, Farsi, Hindi and Urdu. Patients are asked a number of questions in their native language and can choose answers from a comprehensive list. The system then translates the information into English for use by the care providers. It is estimated that approximately half of the patients at the Scarborough Hospital speak English as a second language.

It will be interesting to see how successful this system will be in the ER setting. I would love to see such a system utilized for office visits. Click here to read the news article.

Surgical infection prevention

Check out this article just published in the Archives of Surgery: "Enhancing Compliance With Medicare Guidelines for Surgical Infection Prevention: Experience With a Cross-disciplinary Quality Improvement Team." What were the measures?:

(1) percentage of patients receiving antibiotics within 1 hour of incision,
(2) percentage of patients with appropriately selected antibiotics, and
(3) percentage of patients with antibiotics discontinued within 24 hours of operation end time.

And the results:

One thousand seventy-two patients were monitored. Measure 1 compliance improved from 72.25% to 83.78% (P<.001, Cochran-Armitage trend test); improvement or high performance (>90% compliance) was demonstrated in 5 of 7 services. Measure 2 compliance remained uniformly high (approximately 98%). Measure 3 compliance improved from 54.5% to 87.16% (P<.001); improvement was seen in 5 of 7 services.

How did that do all that? They formed a multidisciplinary team comprised of "a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, nurses (preoperative, operating room, and floor), a pharmacist, a hospital infection control committee member" and quality improvement specialists. They defined the hospital guidelines for surgical infection prevention, they defined personnel roles, they standardized processes and enhanced communication/education for their health care professionals. Did their CME folks certify their improvement activity for credit? Don't know, but they could've! Click here to access the abstract.

ACPE updates noncommercialism criterion

The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education has issued an update to ACPE Criterion 17 - noncommercialism. Basically, they adopted the 2004 ACCME Standards for Commercial Support of CME (with ACCME's permission). "Providers will be first evaluated by these guidelines beginning January 1, 2008." Click here to read the updated criterion. Click here to read the guidance document.

December issue of Medical Meetings magazine published

"Aiming High" is the title of the lead article on the new ACCME accreditation criteria. The writer of the article is the virtuoso with a pen (or is that a keyboard?), Sue Pelletier. The article is a timely read, as they say...
:)

San Diego CME Coordinators' Meeting

I just returned from having lunch with a great group of CME gals. The San Diego CME Coordinators' Meeting occurs on a quarterly basis and offers its "members" an opportunity to discuss what's new in CME and to share best practices. On the agenda today: ACCME New Criteria; CA AB487; and CA AB1195. I predict good things for this group! And I hope this gives y'all an idea about what you and your CME colleagues could be doing on a local level.

Three National Heart Attack Registries to be Combined

Three national heart attack registries are being combined into one registry, and the Duke Clinical Research Institute will play a leading role in the new registry which will be called the "National Cardiovascular Data Registry-Acute Coronary Treatment and Intervention Outcomes Network Registry." Duke cardiologists, Matthew Roe, M.D. and Eric Peterson, M.D. will serve as PIs for the new registry.

"Duke cardiologists were instrumental in the conception and implementation of one the three participating registries, known as CRUSADE. Started five years ago, this registry involves more than 500 hospitals in the United States and has collected clinical data on close to 200,000 patients.

The two other registries joining the collaboration are the National Registry of Myocardial Infarction, supported by Genentech, and the National Cardiovascular Data Registry, supported by American College of Cardiology Foundation.

Each of the three registries has collected detailed data on how patients with acute coronary syndrome were being treated in U.S. hospitals, with the goal helping hospitals stay current with the latest scientific findings."

KUDOS on the collaboration!

"Full court press"

If you missed 60 Minutes last night then you missed an excellent report on combat medicine. The good news is that you can read about it here "A Fighting Chance."

"CME" intervention on DVT prophylaxis in France

An Archives of Internal Medicine article by French doctors reports that provider education on evidence-based guidelines for the prevention of DVT was successful. What made the difference? As reported in the heartwire article, the lead author, Doctor Elodie Sellier (University Hospital, Grenoble, France) states that the decrease in DVTs (from 12.8% preintervention to 7.8% postintervention) was due primarily to an increase in the use of graduated compression stockings. Furthermore:

"Rates of minor bleeding and thrombocytopenia were similar in the two patient groups, and no major bleeding was observed, note Sellier et al, suggesting that the educational intervention reduced the incidence of DVT without compromising patient safety."

Sellier E, et al. Effectiveness of a Guideline for Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis in Elderly Post–Acute Care Patients. Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:2065-2071.

Just curious, do articles like this get into the CME literature database even if there are no keywords like "continuing medical education"?