“This is for any physician to be able to understand what is out there, where they can fit in, and more importantly, where they can lead.”
full-time leadership position as a chief medical officer or president of medical affairs, for instance. Rather, it targets early- to mid-career practicing physicians who recognize they need new tools to survive and thrive in the new environment, TMA leaders say. Oftentimes, physicians feel they
are bystanders to change, when really all they are missing is the right equip- ment to help steer it, says Gregory R. Johnson, MD. The Houston hospital- ist and chief medical officer of Sound Physicians is chair of TMA’s newly appointed Ad Hoc Committee on Accountable Care, which partnered with The University of Texas at Dal- las Naveen Jindal School of Manage- ment faculty to develop the leadership program. The course doesn’t point doctors
toward a particular value-based care model. Rather, “this is for any physi- cian to be able to understand what is out there, where they can fit in, and more importantly, where they can lead,” he said. “The real opportunity here is for physicians to be able to go forward confidently and to drive out- comes, because ultimately we are the ones responsible for our patients.” Those are not skills physicians
typically get in medical school, says Jessica Nguyen-Trong, MD. The in- terventional cardiology fellow at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center is about to graduate from the leadership course. Having participated in organized medicine, the member of TMA’s Council on Leg- islation had a general understanding of the alphabet soup that comprises today’s value-based care world. Even so, the course not only re-
freshed her vocabulary, “but it en- hanced my understanding,” she said. “With the movement toward quality improvement and more accountable care, it gave me some really practical approaches on how to manage and fo- cus more globally on my patient panel and establish good practices. For me, the course provided a lot of insight into the practice management and
50 TEXAS MEDICINE November 2015
business side of medicine. And those are concepts that are taught minimally in our training.”
BY PHYSICIANS, FOR PHYSICIANS TMA launched the Accountable Care Leadership Program hand in hand with TMA PracticeEdge, a physician services organization designed to sup- port physicians in taking advantage of new payment models. (See “Get to Know TMA PracticeEdge,” page 52.) Those models require physicians equipped to lead, and Dr. Johnson says his committee conceived the course not only to identify physicians’ knowledge gaps when it comes to value-based care, but also to fill them with practical educational tools. “We wanted to make sure it was fo-
cused and accessible for physicians,” Dr. Johnson said. TMA developed the course in partnership with UT Dallas, with a primarily online curriculum adapted from the school’s Healthcare Leader- ship and Management for Physicians certificate program. Physicians can access lectures, readings, quizzes, and case studies 24/7, putting in an esti- mated 10 hours of homework every three weeks. Ten months later, they earn a certificate from UT Dallas, plus continuing medical education credits from the American Medical Associa- tion and TMA. About 20 physicians signed on to the pilot course, and fu- ture classes are expected to accommo- date 25 to 30 participants. With all that physicians are respon-
sible for, Dr. Johnson acknowledges the value-based care landscape can be daunting, with its own nomencla- ture, new technology, and approaches to care coordination that come along with it and the speed at which they all collide. “The gaps in [physician knowledge]
are numerous. But this course gives physicians the opportunity to learn at their own pace, with appropriate guidance from the faculty at UT Dal- las and with a peer group,” he said. “It really does give doctors a better sense
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