Financing U.S. Graduate Medical Education: A Policy Position Paper of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians

In this position paper, the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians examine the state of graduate medical education (GME) financing in the United States and recent proposals to reform GME funding. They make a series of recommendations to reform the current funding system to better align GME with the needs of the nation's health care workforce. These recommendations include using Medicare GME funds to meet policy goals and to ensure an adequate supply of physicians, a proper specialty mix, and appropriate training sites; spreading the costs of financing GME across the health care system; evaluating the true cost of training a resident and establishing a single per-resident amount; increasing transparency and innovation; and ensuring that primary care residents receive training in well-functioning ambulatory settings that are financially supported for their training roles

Can residents accurately abstract their own charts

PURPOSE: To assess the accuracy of residents\u27 record review, using trained abstractors as a gold standard comparison. METHOD: In 2005, the authors asked 74 residents to review their own charts (n = 392) after they received brief instruction on both how to locate data on the medical record and how to use a data abstraction form. Trained abstractors then re-reviewed these charts to assess performance of preventive health care measures in medicine (smoking screening, smoking cessation advice, mammography, colon cancer screening, lipid screening, and pneumonia vaccination) and pediatrics (parent smoking screening, parent smoking cessation advice, car seat safety, car restraint use, eye alignment, and immunizations up to date). The authors then quantified agreement between the two record reviews and assessed the sensitivity and specificity of the residents versus the trained abstractors. RESULTS: Overall resident-measured performance was similar (within 5%) to that of the trained abstractor for five of six measures in medicine and four of six in pediatrics. For the various measures, sensitivity of resident-measured performance ranged from 100% to 15% and specificity from 100% to 33% compared with the trained abstractors. Relative to the trained abstractor record review, residents did not overestimate their performance. Most residents\u27 (81%) relative performance rankings did not change when the basis for the ranking was resident measured versus trained abstractor measured. CONCLUSIONS: Residents\u27 self-abstraction can be an alternative to costly trained abstractors. Appropriate use of these data should be carefully considered, acknowledging the limitations

American Internal Medicine in the 21(st) Century: Can an Oslerian Generalism Survive?

American internal medicine suffers a confusion of identity as we enter the 21(st) century. The subspecialties prosper, although unevenly, and retain varying degrees of connection to their internal medicine roots. General internal medicine, identified with primary care since the 1970s, retains an affinity for its traditional consultant-generalist ideal even as primary care further displaces that ideal. We discuss the origins and importance of the consultant-generalist ideal of internal medicine as exemplified by Osler, and its continued appeal in spite of the predominant role played by clinical science and accompanying subspecialism in determining the academic leadership of American internal medicine since the 1920s. Organizing departmental clinical work along subspecialty lines diminished the importance of the consultant-generalist ideal in academic departments of medicine after 1950. General internists, when they joined the divisions of general internal medicine that appeared in departments of medicine in the 1970s, could sometimes emulate Osler in practicing a general medicine of complexity, but often found themselves in a more limited role doing primary care. As we enter the 21(st) century, managed care threatens what remains of the Oslerian ideal, both in departments of medicine and in clinical practice. Twenty-first century American internists will have to adjust their conditions of work should they continue to aspire to practice Oslerian internal medicine

Validation of a Clinical Prediction Rule for the Differential Diagnosis of Acute Meningitis.

OBJECTIVE: To attempt to validate a previously reported clinical prediction rule derived to assist in distinguishing between acute bacterial meningitis and acute viral meningitis. DESIGN: Retrospective chart review of patients treated at five hospitals between 1981 and 1990. The criterion standard for bacterial meningitis was a positive cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or blood culture or a positive test for bacterial antigen in the CSF. For viral meningitis, the criterion standard was a positive viral culture from CSF, stool, or blood or a discharge diagnosis of viral meningitis with no other etiology evident. SETTING: Two Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, two county hospitals, and one private hospital, each affiliated with one of two medical schools. PATIENTS: All persons aged more than 17 years who were hospitalized over a ten-year period at one of five academically affiliated hospitals for the management of acute meningitis. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Sixty-two cases of bacterial meningitis and 98 cases of viral meningitis were confirmed. With all patients included, the discriminatory power of the model as measured by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was 0.977 (95% CI, 0.957-0.997), compared with the AUC of 0.97 in the derivation set of the original publication. The AUCs (95% CIs) for data subsets were: Dallas cases 0.994 (0.986-1.0). Milwaukee cases 0.912 (0.834-0.990); ages 18-39 years 0.952 (0.892-1.0), ages 40-59 years 0.99 (0.951-1.0), and age \u3e or = 60 years 0.955 (0.898-1.0). CONCLUSIONS: The authors conclude that the clinical prediction rule proved robust when applied to a geographically distinct population comprised exclusively of adults. There was sustained performance of the model when applied to cases from each city and from three age strata. Prospective validation of this prediction rule will be necessary to confirm its utility in clinical practice

Diffusion of troponin testing in unstable angina patients: adoption prior to guideline release

BACKGROUND: We examined diffusion of troponin testing in Medicare patients with unstable angina before the release of year 2000 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines recommending measurement in all patients with acute coronary syndromes. METHODS: We identified unstable angina admissions from Medicare administrative files for 22 Alabama hospitals over two time periods: 03/1997-02/1998 and 01/99-12/1999. Data were obtained from chart abstraction. Patients not confirmed for unstable angina by a clinical algorithm were eliminated. RESULTS: For 1997-1998, 1116 (87.7%) of all identified cases were clinically confirmed for unstable angina, and 1176 (90.3%) were confirmed for 1999. In 1997-1998, 235 (21%) of unstable angina patients had troponin measured, compared to 822 (70%) in 1999. From 1999, patients with troponin measurement, vs. those without, more likely had typical angina (50.9%, 37.4%), chest pain on arrival (72.8%, 57.1%), and chest pain at rest (45.4%, 37.2%) and more often received EKG within 20 min of presentation (46.3%, 27.9%) (P\u3c.0005 for all). Patients with abnormal troponin levels more often received angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (54.6%, 18.3%), cardiac catheterization (45.4%, 31.2%), and percutaneous coronary intervention (18.6%, 4.8%) (P\u3c.05 for all). These associations remained significant after multivariable adjustment for patient and hospital characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates increasing and appropriate use of troponin before guideline release. Our findings suggest that guidelines may codify currently accepted practice rather than always disseminate new knowledge. The same forces that lead to guideline development and release may also lead to changes in clinical practice before guideline release

Measuring resident physicians\u27 performance of preventive care. Comparing chart review with patient survey

BACKGROUND: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has suggested various methods for evaluation of practice-based learning and improvement competency, but data on implementation of these methods are limited. OBJECTIVE: To compare medical record review and patient surveys on evaluating physician performance in preventive services in an outpatient resident clinic. DESIGN: Within an ongoing quality improvement project, we collected baseline performance data on preventive services provided for patients at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Internal Medicine Residents\u27 ambulatory clinic. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy internal medicine and medicine-pediatrics residents from the UAB Internal Medicine Residency program. MEASUREMENTS: Resident- and clinic-level comparisons of aggregated patient survey and chart documentation rates of (1) screening for smoking status, (2) advising smokers to quit, (3) cholesterol screening, (4) mammography screening, and (5) pneumonia vaccination. RESULTS: Six hundred and fifty-nine patient surveys and 761 charts were abstracted. At the clinic level, rates for screening of smoking status, recommending mammogram, and for cholesterol screening were similar (difference \u3c5%) between the 2 methods. Higher rates for pneumonia vaccination (76% vs 67%) and advice to quit smoking (66% vs 52%) were seen on medical record review versus patient surveys. However, within-resident (N=70) comparison of 2 methods of estimating screening rates contained significant variability. The cost of medical record review was substantially higher ($107 vs$17/physician). CONCLUSIONS: Medical record review and patient surveys provided similar rates for selected preventive health measures at the clinic level, with the exception of pneumonia vaccination and advising to quit smoking. A large variation among individual resident providers was noted

The Status of the Clinicopathologic Conference in Academic Medical Centers

To determine the current level of use, characteristics, and perceived value of the clinicopathologic conference (CPC), we sent a 22-item survey questionnaire to the program directors of internal medicine residency training programs. Of the 278 residency training programs that returned questionnaires, 221 (80%) indicated that they held CPCs regularly. The conference received a mean rating (Likert scale 1 =best to 5 =worst) of 2.2 (95% confidence interval 2.2, 2.3) for both its perceived educational value and its popularity. The CPC remains widely used in internal medicine training programs. Although relatively few programs have rigorous guidelines for preparation and evaluation of their presentations, the CPC is generally viewed as being popular and having sound educational value

The importance of measuring competency-based outcomes: standard evaluation measures are not surrogates for clinical performance of internal medicine residents

BACKGROUND: Despite recent emphasis on educational outcomes, program directors still rely on standard evaluation techniques such as tests of knowledge and subjective ratings. PURPOSES: To assess the correlation of standard internal medicine (IM) residency evaluation scores (attending global evaluations, In-Training examination, and Mini-Clinical Examination Exercise) with documented performance of preventive measures for continuity clinic patients. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of 132 IM residents attending an IM teaching clinic, July 2000 to June 2003, comparing standard evaluations with chart audit. RESULTS: Mean resident performance ranged from 53% (SD = 24) through 89% (SD = 20) across the 6 preventive measures abstracted from 1,102 patient charts. We found weak and mostly not significant correlations between standard measures and performance of preventive services. CONCLUSIONS: Standard measures are not adequate surrogates for measuring clinical outcomes. This supports the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education\u27s recommendations to incorporate novel Toolbox measures, like chart audit, into residency evaluations