ACGME Commits Funding for Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments

CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - February 16, 2016) - Today the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) announced Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments, a four-year initiative designed to promote transformative improvement within the clinical learning environments of ACGME-accredited Sponsoring Institutions in which resident and fellow physicians pursue their formal clinical training in a specialty or subspecialty.

The ACGME will provide funding through a competitive award process. Up to eight Sponsoring Institutions will be selected to receive awards of up to $75,000 per year over four years, with the expectation that each will provide a 1:1 match of those funds. The first of its kind for the ACGME, the initiative aims to enhance and elevate graduate medical education and prepare physicians for the future of health care.

"Given dramatic changes underway in the institutions that sponsor graduate medical education, the ACGME has committed seed funding to spur research and rapid innovation in the clinical learning environment," said ACGME Chief Executive Officer Thomas J. Nasca, MD, MACP. "Pursuing Excellence is a catalyst for change, with the goals of enhanced patient care and interprofessional team-based teaching practices."

The initiative stems from the ACGME's larger Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) Program, which was launched in 2012 to provide feedback to the nation's teaching hospital and medical center leadership. "Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments is designed to better align leaders of health systems with those of graduate medical education to engage residents in quality improvement and the delivery of safe, effective, and patient-centered care," said ACGME Board of Directors Chair John Duval.

Innovations from Pursuing Excellence will be disseminated through a shared system of ongoing, collaborative learning, and will include three major components: Pathway Innovators, Pathway Leaders and Pathway Learners. "Through this model, our intention is to bring about high-leverage changes that broadly affect the quality of clinical learning environments," explained ACGME Senior Vice President, Institutional Accreditation Kevin B. Weiss, MD, MPH. "A core group of innovators will share its efforts in Pursuing Excellence with an ever-widening network of leaders and learners across the U.S."

The Request for Proposals will be issued following the ACGME's Annual Educational Conference February 25-28, 2016, and the awardees will be announced the first week of July 2016.

This ACGME-led initiative includes strategic partnerships with 21 other national, interprofessional health care and education organizations seeking to rapidly improve the quality of the clinical learning environment in which physicians and other clinical professionals are trained. Partners will meet regularly and provide critical insights and expertise to inform the initiative over its four years. These partners include:

• Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)
• Alliance of Independent Academic Medical Centers (AIAMC)
• American Association for Physician Leadership
• American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM)
• American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS)
• American Hospital Association (AHA)
• American Medical Association (AMA)
• American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)
• American Osteopathic Association (AOA)
• American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP)
• Association for Hospital Medical Education (AHME)
• Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
• Association of Osteopathic Directors and Medical Educators (AODME)
• Council of Medical Specialty Societies (CMSS)
• Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
• Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)
• National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF)
• Organization of Program Director Associations (OPDA)
• The Joint Commission (TJC)
•  Vizient, Inc. (formerly University HealthSystem Consortium)

Additional information about Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments is available at http://www.acgme.org/pursuingexcellence.

The ACGME is a private, non-profit, professional organization responsible for the accreditation of approximately 9,500 residency and fellowship programs and approximately 700 institutions that sponsor these programs in the United States. Residency and fellowship programs educate over 120,000 resident physicians in 130 specialties and subspecialties. The ACGME's mission is to improve health care and population health by assessing and advancing the quality of resident physicians' education through accreditation.