Improving Chronic Illness Care
Improving Chronic Illness Care

Association of American Medical College Academic Chronic Care Collaborative

In 2005, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Institute for Improving Clinical Care embarked on a partnership with ICIC to offer a collaborative initiative to facilitate adoption of the Chronic Care Model in academic settings. The first Academic Chronic Care Collaborative (ACCC) was anchored in the rationale that health professions students and residents should learn in settings that strive always to deliver the highest standard of care achievable. The initiative employed the Breakthrough Series Collaborative learning model developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Teams were assembled from a group of academic centers prepared to implement change in the care of one or more selected chronic conditions. Teams were encouraged to focus on a condition where the Model has been implemented effectively; conditions of focus include diabetes, asthma, congestive heart failure, chronic arthritis, and depression.

Now completed, the goal of this 18-month AAMC collaborative was to improve the care of patients with chronic illness and the education of the health care teams providing the care in academic settings.  Collaborative goals were established to be met within that year and a half  -- through sharing ideas and knowledge, learning and applying a methodology for organizational change, implementing a chronic disease management model and a resident educational model practice-wide, and measuring progress in population outcomes and educational outcomes.
 
Read "The AAMC Academic Chronic Care Collaborative: family medicine's participation and lessons learned" in the March-April 2007 edition of Annals of Family Medicine.
 
The following organizations participated in the AAMC-ACCC:
 
Duke University Medical Center                                     Summa Health System 
Vanderbilt University Medical Center                              OHSU
Southern Illinois University                                            University of MN Medical School
University of MI School of Medicine                                Emory Healthcare
Harbor UCLA Medical Center                                         Montefiore Medical Center 
University of Louisville Health Sciences Center            University of Nebraska Medical Center
St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center                               Medical College of Wisconsin
University of Cincinnati Medical Center                          University of Alabama at Birmingham 
University of South Carolina School of Medicine               University of CO Hospital     
University of Kentucky Medical School                           
Lehigh Valley Hospital Network (Penn State School of Medicine)
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine