Conferences
General Session Speakers
Friday, February 3
8:15–9:45 am
Educating Leaders and Followers for Health System Improvement
Kevin Grumbach, MD, University of California – San Francisco, and San Francisco General Hospital
The United States is in a period of vigorous reform of health care delivery which offers tremendous potential for a renaissance of primary care. One of the key tasks for medical educators is to prepare physicians, and family physicians in particular, to be active agents of health system change. Don Berwick has identified as a core health professional competency, “Leading, following, and making changes in health care: Understanding how to function in, and to lead, teams, and to organize and participate in intentional change.” While leadership skills are often highlighted in medical education, less attention is given to the skills of “follower-ship” and teamwork. This presentation will make the case for a balanced portfolio of skills to lead, follow, and promote teamwork as essential to preparing physicians to engage in health system change and improvement.
Kevin Grumbach, MD is professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and chief of Family and Community Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. He is the director of the UCSF Center for California Health Workforce Studies, codirector of the UCSF Center for Excellence in Primary Care, and codirector of the Community Engagement and Health Policy Program for the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute. His research on topics such as primary care physician supply and access to care, innovations in the delivery of primary care, and racial and ethnic diversity in the health professions have been published in major medical journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association and cited widely in both health policy forums and the general media. With Tom Bodenheimer, he co-authored the best-selling textbook on health policy, Understanding Health Policy – A Clinical Approach, and the book, Improving Primary Care – Strategies and Tools for a Better Practice. He received a Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration Award for Health Workforce Research on Diversity, and the Richard E. Cone Award for Excellence and Leadership in Cultivating Community Partnerships in Higher Education, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. Dr Grumbach has served as a campaign surrogate and member of the health policy advisory committee for the Barack Obama presidential campaign, an advisor to Obama’s health transition team, and an advisor to Congressional Committees and government agencies on primary care and health reform.
Dr Grumbach practices family medicine at the Family Health Center at San Francisco General Hospital.
Sunday, February 5
8:15–9:45 am
Bending the Cost Curve and Improving Quality in One of America’s Poorest Cities – Camden, NJ
Jeffrey Brenner, MD, Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, Camden, NJ
The City of Camden is one of America’s poorest cities. For the last 9 years, the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers has been working to build a citywide coalition to improve the quality, capacity, and accessibility of health care services while reducing costs. Driven by a homegrown patient-level database with 8 years of longitudinal hospital claims records for every city resident, the Coalition has worked methodically to redesign how healthcare is delivered and target services to the most costly and complex patients. The Coalition efforts include a combination of primary care clinical redesign, a citywide Health Information Exchange, outreach projects targeted to the highest cost patients, patient education programs, and community organizing. The Camden Coalition worked with the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, New Jersey Hospital Association, Citizen Action, and other partners to pass a Medicaid Accountable Care Organization (ACO) bill in August 2011. The bill will permit shared savings to be captured from reductions in ER and hospital use in Medicaid and the Camden Coalition will be the first Medicaid ACO in New Jersey. The Coalition was recently featured in an article by Dr Atul Gawande in the New Yorker and on PBS Frontline.
Jeffrey Brenner, MD is a family physician that has worked in Camden, NJ for the past 12 years. Dr Brenner owned and operated a solo-practice, urban family medicine office that provided full-spectrum family health services to a largely Hispanic, Medicaid population including delivering babies, caring for children and adults, and doing home visits. He attended Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and completed a family medicine residency at the Swedish Health Center in Seattle, Washington. Dr Brenner is the director of the Institute of Urban Health at Cooper Hospital where he has spearheaded innovative solutions for improving the health of urban, underserved communities. Recognizing the need for a new way for hospitals, providers, and residents to collaborate, he founded and has run the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers since 2003. The Camden Coalition is a non-profit organization, committed to improving the quality, capacity, and accessibility of the health care delivery system in Camden. His work is dependent on building complex collaborations amongst three highly competitive hospitals, two local FQHC’s, and small private offices in Camden. Through the Camden Coalition, local stakeholders are working to build an integrated, health delivery model to provide better care for Camden City residents. His life’s goal is ensure that all families who live in urban, underserved communities receive high quality, culturally competent, personalized family health care.
