ACGME Chooses Pathway Leaders for Quality Improvement in Health Care Disparities Collaborative

Today the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) announced the selection of nine Pathway Leaders, institutions that will form a Quality Improvement in Health Care Disparities Collaborative as part of the ACGME's Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments initiative.

The Quality Improvement in Health Care Disparities Collaborative is the third in a series of shared learning forums that focus on optimizing the engagement of residents and fellows in learning that enhances their ability to provide high-quality health care. The Collaborative uses a framework developed by the National Collaborative for Improving the Clinical Learning Environment (NCICLE), which identifies foundational elements for engaging new clinicians in quality improvement efforts to eliminate health care disparities; the role of leadership in enabling, developing, and supporting those elements; and new clinician skills and behaviors important for eliminating disparities and providing equitable care.

The Sponsoring Institutions chosen for the Quality Improvement in Health Care Disparities’ Collaborative are:

• Children's Hospital Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)
• Citrus Health Network, Inc. (Hialeah, FL)
• HealthPartners Institute (Bloomington, MN)
• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY)
• Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, CA)
• Newark Beth Israel Medical Center (Newark, NJ)
• Ohio State University Hospital (Columbus, OH)
• University of Michigan Health System (Ann Arbor, MI)
• VA Caribbean Healthcare System (San Juan, PR)

Pursuing Excellence in Clinical Learning Environments promotes transformative improvement in clinical learning environments. The initiative grew out of the ACGME's Clinical Learning Environment Review Program, which provides feedback to the nation's teaching hospitals, medical centers, health systems, and other clinical settings in the areas of patient safety, health care quality, care transitions, supervision, fatigue management (well-being), and professionalism.

"Helping new clinicians view care through a lens that continually seeks to improve health care equity, and enhancing the skills to engage with the clinical learning environment to address disparities in care has the potential to change organizational culture and shape a workforce that is prepared to engage with and treat every patient according to their needs," said Kevin B. Weiss, MD, senior vice president, Institutional Accreditation. "We are already seeing a national conversation sparked by the transformative work underway through Pursuing Excellence and look forward to engaging this group of dedicated organizations."