Upgrade, enhance and revitalize your practice with AAFP three-step program

Through a three-step AAFP program, family medicine practice staffs are invited to take a critical look at the way they treat chronic illnesses and institute a quality improvement project to obtain improved outcomes for these patients.

The Practice Enhancement Forum trains a three-part family medicine team—consisting of a family physician, a front-office staff person such as a nurse or physician assistant and a back-office staff person such as the practice manager or receptionist—on the core elements of the Chronic Care Model, which was developed by staff at the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation. The Chronic Care Model integrates elements of the health care system and the community to encourage productive interactions between patients and health care providers.

Participation in each regional PEF is limited to 12 family medicine teams on a first come, first served basis. These teams complete their improvement activities in one of five clinical areas: asthma, coronary artery disease, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or geriatrics. Before the two-day conference, the teams must register for one of AAFP’s METRIC modules—Measuring, Evaluating and Translating Research Into Care—and complete the module’s online practice assessment and chart review, complete an overview of the Chronic Care Model and review an introduction to quality improvement principles.

At the two-day course, for which physicians can earn up to 20 AAFP Prescribed CME hours, each practice team meets with a quality-improvement mentor and participates in interactive education sessions. After the course, the teams must develop an action plan and work with their assigned mentor to implement the identified practice improvements.

The Texas-Oklahoma PEF will be held Nov. 7-8, 2008 in Dallas; registration closes on Sept. 26. The area of focus will be on improving geriatric care. Go to the PEF home page, www.aafp.org/pef, for more information and to register or read the conference brochure.