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Objectives: Resident and fellow engagement in patient safety event investigations (PSEIs) can benefit both the clinical learning environment's ability to improve patient care and learners' problem-solving skills. The goals of this collaborative were to increase resident and fellow participation in these investigations and improve PSEI quality., Methods: This collaborative involved 18 sites-8 sites that had participated in a similar previous collaborative (cohort I) and 10 "new" sites (cohort II). The 18-month collaborative included face-to-face and virtual learning sessions, check-ins, and coaching calls. A validated assessment tool measured PSEI quality, and sites tracked the percentage of first-year residents and fellows included in a PSEI., Results: Sixteen of the 18 sites completed the 18-month collaborative. Baseline was no first-year resident or fellow participation in a PSEI. Among these 16 clinical learning environments, 1237 early learners participated in a PSEI by the end of the collaborative. Six of these 16 sites (38%) reached the goal of 100% participation of first-year residents and fellows. As a percentage of total first-year residents and fellows, larger institutions had less resident and fellow participation. Six of the 9 cohort II sites submitted PSEIs for independent review at 6 months and again at the end of the collaborative. The PSEI quality scores increased from 5.9 ± 1.8 to 8.2 ± 0.8 ( P ≤ 0.05)., Conclusions: It is possible to include all residents and fellows in PSEIs. Patient safety event investigation quality can improve through resident and fellow participation, use of standardized processes during training and investigations, and review of PSEI quality scores with a validated tool., (Copyright © 2023 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

The closure of Philadelphia's Hahnemann University Hospital (HUH) in summer 2019 brought an abrupt end to its status as a sponsor of graduate medical education (GME). The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) provided assistance to ensure that more than 550 residents and fellows in HUH's 35 ACGME-accredited programs were able to transfer to new programs in which they could continue their education. As the ACGME joined other organizations in responding to HUH's closure, it was apparent that the voices of residents and fellows should be emphasized in regulatory processes and policies that address substantial disruptions to GME and affect their education, their daily lives, and their professional futures.

Purpose: The National Collaborative for Improving the Clinical Learning Environment offers guidance to health care leaders for engaging new clinicians in efforts to eliminate health care disparities., Summary: To address health care disparities that are pervasive across the United States, individuals at all levels of the health care system need to commit to ensuring equity in care. Engaging new clinicians is a key element of any systems-based approach, as new clinicians will shape the future of health care delivery. Clinical learning environments, or the hospitals, medical centers, and ambulatory care clinics where new clinicians train, have an important role in this process. Efforts may include training in cultural humility and cultural competency, education about the organization's vulnerable populations, and continuous interprofessional experiential learning through comprehensive, systems-based QI efforts focused on eliminating health care disparities., Conclusion: By preparing and supporting new clinicians to engage in systems-based QI efforts to eliminate health care disparities, clinical learning environments are instilling skills and supporting behaviors that clinicians can build throughout their careers-and helping pave the road towards equity throughout the US health care system., (Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists 2019.)

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has launched a new shared learning collaborative as part of its larger Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) initiative. The collaboration, called Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments, aims to improve teaching practices and patient care in the hospitals, medical centers, and ambulatory care sites where residents and fellows pursue their formal clinical training in a specialty or subspecialty. The Pursuing Excellence Initiative (PEI) builds on the 2015 report of findings of the CLER program. These findings demonstrate variability across the nation's teaching hospitals in addressing 6 key focus areas. PEI sets up a shared system of collaborative learning among participating sites of ACGME-accredited institutions, in which early participants share advances that will be disseminated through an expanding circle of other participants. The ACGME will award funding to encourage participation in the first major component of PEI. The goal is to stimulate high-leverage changes that will broadly improve patient care and clinical learning environments across the nation.

Quality improvement (QI) skills are relevant to efforts to improve the health care system. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) program requirements call for resident participation in local and institutional QI efforts, and the move to outcomes-based accreditation is resulting in greater focus on the resulting learning and clinical outcomes. Many programs have enhanced practice-based learning and improvement (PBLI) and systems based practice (SBP) curricula, although efforts to actively involve residents in QI activities appear to be lagging. Using information from the extensive experience of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, we offer recommendations for how to create meaningful QI experiences for residents meet ACGME requirements and the expectations of the Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) process. Resident involvement in QI requires a multipronged approach that overcomes barriers and limitations that have frustrated earlier efforts to move this education from lectures to immersion experiences at the bedside and in the clinic. We present 5 dimensions of effective programs that facilitate active resident participation in improvement work and enhance their QI skills: 1) providing curricula and education models that ground residents in QI principles; 2) ensuring faculty development to prepare physicians for their role in teaching QI and demonstrating it in day-to-day practice; 3) ensuring all residents receive meaningful QI education and practical exposure to improvement projects; 4) overcoming time and other constraints to allow residents to apply their newly developed QI skills; and 5) assessing the effect of exposure to QI on resident competence and project outcomes., (Copyright © 2014 Academic Pediatric Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Board of Medical Specialties and its member boards introduced the six domains of physician competency in 1999. This initiated a national dialogue concerning the elements of competency of the physician, and incorporation of these elements into the framework of evaluation of residents and fellows, as well as the educational programs within which they are trained. The next step in this process will be the ACGME's Next Accreditation System, which the authors describe in this commentary. Recognizing that there are already developments in the assessment of medical education that will influence future models of accreditation, the authors consider some of these innovations and discuss how they may shape the next accreditation system after the Next Accreditation System.

There is a substantial international body of research that supports the value of the use of multisource feedback (MSF) for physician performance assessment. In this issue, Wright and colleagues add to this body of literature by examining two instruments designed to collect MSF from large cohorts of patients and colleagues in the context of physician performance evaluation in the United Kingdom. In the United States there is a reticence by leading physician organizations to adopt the use of patient and peer feedback in key evaluations such as maintenance of specialty board certification or licensure. This commentary explores this incongruity in light of the 50th anniversary of Thomas Kuhn's seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It is concluded that, although the paradigm of using patient and peer evaluation in the United States appears to be shifting, the profession, by way of not providing MSF to the public, is losing its role in being the unique provider of public information on physician performance.

Since the release of the Institute of Medicine's report on resident hours and patient safety, there have been calls for enhanced institutional oversight of duty hour limits and of efforts to enhance the quality and safety of care in teaching hospitals. The ACGME has established the Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) program as a key component of the Next Accreditation System with the aim to promote safety and quality of care by focusing on 6 areas important to the safety and quality of care in teaching hospitals and the care residents will provide in a lifetime of practice after completion of training. The 6 areas encompass engagement of residents in patient safety, quality improvement and care transitions, promoting appropriate resident supervision, duty hour oversight and fatigue management, and enhancing professionalism. Over the coming 18 months the ACGME will develop, test, and fully implement this new program by conducting visits to the nearly 400 clinical sites of sponsoring institutions with two or more specialty or subspecialty programs. These site visits will provide an understanding of how the learning environment for the 116 000 current residents and fellows addresses the 6 areas important to safety and quality of care, and will generate baseline data on the status of these activities in accredited institutions. We expect that over time the CLER program will serve as a new source of formative feedback for teaching institutions, and generate national data that will guide performance improvement for United States graduate medical education.

Objective: Racial/ethnic disparities have been well documented in asthma. While socioeconomic status (SES) has been repeatedly implicated as a root cause, the role of limited health literacy has not been extensively studied. The purpose of this study was to examine the independent contributions of SES and health literacy in explaining asthma disparities., Methods: A cohort study was conducted in a Chicago-based sample of 353 adults aged 18-40 years with persistent asthma from 2004 to 2007. Health literacy, SES, and asthma outcomes including disease control, quality of life, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations were assessed in person at baseline, and asthma outcomes were measured every 3 months for 2 years by phone. Multivariate models were used to assess racial/ethnic disparities in asthma outcomes and the effect of health literacy and SES on these estimates., Results: Compared with White participants, African American adults fared significantly worse in all asthma outcomes (p < .05) and Latino participants had lower quality of life (β = -0.47; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.79, -0.14; p = .01) and worse asthma control (risk ratio [RR] = 0.63; 95% CI = 0.41, 0.98; p = .04). Differences in SES partially explained these disparities. Health literacy explained an additional 20.2% of differences in quality of life between Latinos and Whites, but differences in hospitalization rates between African American and White adults remained (RR = 2.97; 95% CI = 1.09, 8.12, p = .03)., Conclusions: Health literacy appears to be an overlooked factor explaining racial and ethnic disparities in asthma. Evidence-based low literacy strategies for patient education and counseling should be included in comprehensive interventions.

In this issue, Lipner and colleagues describe research supporting the value of the examinations used in the maintenance of certification (MOC) programs of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Surgery. The authors of this commentary review the contribution of this research and previous investigations that underscore the value of this component of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) MOC program. In addition, they point out that the MOC examination is one element of a comprehensive approach to physician lifelong learning, assessment, and quality improvement. The ABMS MOC program requires diplomates of the ABMS member boards to engage in continuous professional development in the six domains of competence and performance previously defined by the ABMS and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Although evidence and a sound rationale exist to support educational and assessment methods that target all six domains, it will be important to continue to build the body of evidence demonstrating the value of MOC to the public and to the profession.

Working with a group of key stakeholders, the authors developed an episode-based resource use measure focused on the use of colonoscopy. This measure is intended to identify differences in health care resource use in a short time frame surrounding the colonoscopy. The ultimate intent in the development of this measure was to pair it with a measure of quality so that both the cost and quality of care can be evaluated together. In initial testing, the authors found the use of general anesthesia with colonoscopy to be associated with higher episode costs. Eventually, when paired with quality measures, it is hoped this measure will provide actionable information for health care payers and providers to more efficiently provide colonoscopy services without compromising quality., (Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Policy maker efforts to evaluate the quality and costs of health care have stimulated a proliferation of disparate performance measures. This cacophony of performance measures creates confusion over which measures are applicable at which level of the health care system, limiting their effective application for accountability and improvements in patient care. The American College of Physicians (ACP) has created a clinical performance measurement framework to provide direction to policy makers and measure developers for future performance measure development and application. The ACP believes that this clinical performance measurement framework is one way to help promote transformational change in patient care through judicious application of performance measures. Recommendation. The ACP recommends that policy makers and measure developers adopt this clinical performance measurement framework to promote transformational change and improve the quality of health care in the United States.