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Introduction: Clinical departments at academic medical centers strive to deliver clinical care, provide education and training, support faculty development, and promote scholarship. These departments have experienced increasing demands to improve the quality, safety, and value of care delivery. However, many academic departments lack a sufficient number of clinical faculty members with expertise in improvement science to lead initiatives, teach, and generate scholarship. In this article, we describe the structure, activities, and early outcomes of a program within an academic department of medicine to promote scholarly improvement work. Methods: The Department of Medicine at the University of Vermont Medical Center launched a Quality Program with three primary goals: (a) improve care delivery, (b) provide education and training, and (c) promote scholarship in improvement science. The program serves as a resource center for students, trainees and faculty, offering education and training, analytic support, consultation in design and methodology, and project management. It strives to integrate education, research, and care delivery to learn, apply evidence and improve health care. Results: Over the first 3 years of full implementation, the Quality Program supported an average of 123 projects annually, including prospective clinical quality improvement initiatives, retrospective assessment of clinical programs and practices, and curriculum development and evaluation. The projects have yielded a total of 127 scholarly products, defined as peer‐reviewed publications and abstracts, posters, and oral presentations at local, regional, and national conferences. Conclusions: The Quality Program may serve as a practical model for promoting care delivery improvement, training, and scholarship in improvement science while advancing the goals of a learning health system at the level of an academic clinical department. Dedicated resources within such departments offer the potential to enhance care delivery while promoting academic success for faculty and trainees in improvement science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To perform a factor analysis of the Practice Integration Profile (PIP), a 30-item practice-level measure of primary care and behavioral health integration derived from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Lexicon for Behavioral Health and Primary Care Integration.Data Sources: The PIP was completed by 735 individuals, representing 357 practices across the United States.Study Design: The study design was a cross-sectional survey. An exploratory factor analysis and assessment of internal consistency reliability via Cronbach's alpha were performed.Data Collection Methods: Participant responses were collected using REDCap, a secure, web-based data capture tool.Principal Findings: Five of the PIP's six domains had factor loadings for most items related to each factor representing the PIP of 0.50 or greater. However, one factor had items from two PIP domains that had loadings >0.50. A five-factor model with redistributed items resulted in improved factor loadings for all domains along with greater internal consistency reliability (>0.80).Conclusions: Five of the PIP's six domains demonstrated excellent internal consistency for measures of health care resources. Although minor improvements to strengthen the PIP are possible, it is a valid and reliable measure of the integration of primary care and behavioral health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is current need for objective measures of sciatic nerve mobility in patients with sciatic‐type pain. The objective of the study was to assess the feasibility and reliability of ultrasound elastography to quantify sciatic nerve displacement and shear strain at the sciatic nerve–hamstring muscle interface during active and passive knee extension‐flexion exercises performed while sitting in healthy people. Ultrasound elastography showed excellent intrarater within‐session reliability for assessing sciatic nerve displacement and sciatic nerve–hamstring muscle interface shear strain during active knee extension‐flexion exercises. These findings will inform similar future work conducted in patients with sciatic‐type pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]