Physicians: New program helps you learn the essentials to improve patient safety

To help you improve the delivery of safe and effective patient care, we're pleased to promote the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Patient Safety Improvement Program, a professional resource for physicians to learn essentials for improving patient safety in any clinical setting. ABMS is the organization that sets standards for board certification of physician specialists.

The content of the ABMS Patient Safety Improvement Program is designed to be relevant to physicians in all specialties. Learning modules focus on specific ways you can improve upon safety in your clinical environment by carefully examining particular aspects of your practice and implementing improvements based on best practices. This is the same program that some ABMS Member Boards have adopted for inclusion in their Maintenance of Certification process.

With a robust curriculum and performance improvement activities, this Web-based program provides a self-paced educational experience presented in these broad areas:

• Patient safety scenarios highlight key themes of patient safety that cut across disciplines such as medication errors, handoffs and teamwork
• Patient safety curriculum comprehensively covers Epidemiology, Systems, Communication and Safety Culture
• Quality improvement fundamentals provide the tools and techniques to make improvements in practice
• Patient safety improvement activities introduce changes in areas including hand hygiene, medication lists, allergy lists, critical test results, correct person/site/procedure, safer prescription writing and discharge communication

BCBSIL is supporting the process of educating physicians about patient safety by including this CME program in the 2008 HMO Quality Improvement (QI) Fund. HMO IPAs will be eligible for a QI Fund payment, based upon the percentage of IPA physicians who have completed the program by November 30, 2008. In addition, PPO physicians who complete the program by October 1, 2008, can receive credit on their 2008 PPO Practitioner profile.

The ABMS Patient Safety Improvement Program offers 20 hours of CME credit. It was planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and is offered through the joint sponsorship of HealthStream and ABMS. HealthStream is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Physicians may enroll for the program at a reduced price by using the following link: www.healthstream.com/hlc/bcbs. The link takes you to a login page where you may register for the HealthStream Web site. Once you have logged in, select the "Catalog" tab and search for "safety." Select "ABMS Patient Safety Improvement Program," which will take you to a page with details about the CME program. Clicking on "Enroll in this Course" allows you enroll in and pay for the program.

BCBSIL will only be able to give HMO and/or PPO credit for the program if the physician provides online authorization allowing HealthStream to report the physician's completion to BCBSIL.

To help answer some of the most common questions about the Program, a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) is available. This list may be printed and duplicated to be used as a reference for you and your office staff.

ABMS Patient Safety Improvement Program Frequently Asked Questions

For more information about the ABMS Patient Safety Improvement Program, contact Nancy Hudecek RN, BSN, MS at HealthStream, Inc. She can be reached by email at nancy.hudecek@healthstream.com or by phone at 1-931-484-3370. For more information about the BCBSIL HMO and PPO recognition programs, call BCBSIL at 1-312-653-3465.