Providers for Responsible Ordering: The Williamsport Family Medicine Residency has established an active chapter of the Resident Physician led organization, Providers for Responsible Ordering (PRO). A grassroots initiative aimed at providing patients with “all the care they need and none they do not,” PRO is an organization involving multiple hospital systems across the eastern United States including Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Yale-New Haven Hospital, and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Williamsport’s local chapter is currently working on projects that target appropriate transfusion of blood, appropriate lab testing in hospital patients, and the cost of labor inductions. Our program emphasizes evidenced-based medicine to provide the highest quality of care while practicing appropriate financial stewardship. We are working to ensure that our patients today and tomorrow will get “all the care they need and none they do not.”
IMPLiCIT (Interventions to Minimize Preterm and Low Birth Weight Infants through Continuous Improvement Techniques) is part of a network of residency programs where we look at five key areas and how they impact preterm birth and low-birth weight in infants:
Recent QI initiatives have focused on the barriers to implementation of long-acting reversible contraception immediately postpartum.
SMaRT Grant SBIRT (Screening Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment) in Medical and Residency Training is a training research project that shows residents how to screen for substance abuse – alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Residents are taught how to use the screening tool, and the residents are tracked to see if they use the screening tool in practice at six months, one year, two years, five years and 10 years after residency.
21st century medical care will be defined by quality. The Williamsport Family Medicine Residency actively seeks to prepare the next generation of family physicians to respond to the growing emphasis on quality in medicine. Our residents have opportunities to learn the concepts behind quality improvement, perform residency quality improvement projects, and apply these principles at the bedside with their own patients. Specific areas currently being addressed include diabetic care, prevention of preterm delivery, chronic pain management, and transitional care management.
As a residency practice, we are actively involved in quality improvement through collaboration with other family medicine programs in the region, and quality improvement projects through our parent organization, UPMC.
Beyond that, we are supportive of residents who want to start new qualitative or quantitative research projects. We require (and provide adequate opportunities to complete) scholarly activities in compliance with ACGME requirements – including a senior case presentation (clinico-pathological correlation) that each resident gives at a grand rounds program, outpatient panel assessments and change implementation, and the completion of Self Assessment Modules as part of each resident’s continuing medical education.
