Helping Clinicians Address Social Determinants of Health
The Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI) as a four-year technical assistance program designed to help clinicians expand their quality improvement capacity, engage in greater peer-to-peer learning, and utilize health data to determine gaps and target intervention needs. The TCPI model tests whether a three-pronged approach to national technical assistance will enable large scale transformation of thousands of clinician practices to deliver better care and result in better health outcomes at lower costs for Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollees. This technical assistance design includes: (1) aligned federal and state programs and resources moving toward common transformation goals; (2) Practice Transformation Networks (PTN) formed by group practices, health care systems, and others that join to serve as trusted partners to provide clinician practices with quality improvement expertise, best practices, coaching and help as they prepare and conduct clinical and operational practice transformation; and, (3) Support and Alignment Networks (SANs) formed by professional associations and others that align their memberships, communication channels, continuing medical education credits and other work to support the PTNs and clinician practices.
Value-Based Video Series for CME Credit
As part of the approach to model development and execution, the Learning and Diffusion Group (LDG) at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) works with model teams and model participants to build a collaborative learning framework grounded in improvement science. Each model-specific learning system facilitates capturing new information about the model, data demonstrating improvement and impact, as well as lessons learned and promising practices, which are then disseminating to the wider health care community. A crucial area for cross-model learning that has not been leveraged to date is more effective engagement between CMS and clinicians to increase awareness of value-based concepts, promising practices, and opportunities as a foundational step toward participating in CMMI models. The statutory criteria for CMMI work includes references to incorporating innovative methods for the clinical training of future health care professionals. These clinicians are potential model participants in future CMMI models and they need education, tools, and information about value-based care and alternative payment models (APMs) that can be introduced through this video series. The mandated concept is to support the development of the script, production, and design approach for a video series that will focus on educating new clinicians from across the U.S. on value-based payment concepts in Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This video series will provide Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits consisting of educational content focused on value-based payment concepts that serve to develop the knowledge, skills, and professional performance that a clinician uses to provide services to Medicare and Medicaid, and CHIP patients.
Learning and Development Division Support Services
Defense Health Agency (DHA) is responsible for the effective execution and operation of the Department of Defense (DoD) medical mission, which is to provide medical services and support to specified categories of individuals entitled to DoD medical care. Specifically, DHA is responsible for managing TRICARE, administering and managing the Defense Health Program budget, and providing support to the Uniformed Services in the management and administration of TRICARE. The DHA provides medical care for the DoD’s 9.6 million eligible beneficiaries, which is provided through the $17 billion defense health program that includes contracted health care networks and military treatment facilities. The DHA currently employs approximately 2,000 government civil service, military personnel, and Public Health Service (PHS) Officers at the DHA Headquarters and 2,000 employees located at its (40) additional sites across the US, Japan, Germany, Italy, Greece, Bahrain, Diego Garcia, Guantanamo Cuba, Djibouti, Greenland, Iceland, South Korea, Spain and Turkey. Learning and Development Division (LDD) plays an integral role in assessing and providing the training needs of the DHA workforce. We utilize internal and external resources to ensure our career enhancement efforts support the agency mission critical initiatives as well as further develop core competencies necessary to accomplish those goals through a myriad of training environments. The training division is staffed by five full time federal civilians and supported by nine contract staff. Our extensive training services are available to all DHA civilian employees and military personnel. Training programs feature an innovative approach with customized curriculums to target the individual and collective needs of DHA employees.
