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Medical students propose "interventions" for local healthcare institutions

Doctors are usually focused on diagnosing people's health problems. But some medical students at the KU School of Medicine-Wichita were recenly assigned to diagnose ways local health care institutions could improve medical care.

Doctors are usually focused on diagnosing people's health problems. But some medical students at the KU School of Medicine–Wichita were recently assigned to diagnose ways local healthcare institutions could improve medical care.

Robert Badgett, M.D., professor of internal medicine at the school, teaches those students in a course called Health of the Public. Students work in teams of four or five to design "interventions" for parts of the medical system that aren't working as well as they could.

"It used to be that you strove to be excellent personally," said Badgett. "Now, health care is too complicated for that. You've got to be part of an excellent team."

The student-designed plans for improvements are presented publicly, and attended by faculty and fellow students.

Matthew Leroy, a fourth-year student from Hutchinson, Kansas, was part of a team that proposed methods to lower readmission rates among patients of KU residents in the internal medicine program at Via Christi Health.

His team's presentation detailed a straightforward problem: readmitting patients to the hospital repeatedly for the same problem isn't good for the patient or the hospital.

Key to preventing readmissions is timely follow-up at an outpatient clinic. But for a variety of reasons, those follow-up visits don't always occur. To help boost the rate of visits, students proposed methods to streamline the methods residents use to schedule appointments, and increased patient education to emphasize the importance of receiving follow-up care.

The team employed texts and emails to ensure residents had a quick contact to the KU outpatient clinic, where follow-up appointments are scheduled. "Residents don't have time to sit on the phone," Leroy said.

Similar methods were used to give patients easier access to the date and time of their appointment, as well as a reminder of its importance.

The student teams are required to do a cost analysis of their proposed intervention to demonstrate its feasibility. The cost in this case was negligible, with payoffs in improved patient outcomes, and increased revenue for the clinic.

Leroy's team will present its work at a statewide conference on lowering hospital readmissions in Topeka, Kan. Other team members are Joseph Baalmann, Megan Renehan, Rachel Svaty, and Obi Agborbesong.

Badgett has been assigning the intervention plans to students since he began teaching the class in 2012. And, he says, it's more than just an academic exercise. "My guess is that every team has two to four suggestions that have been implemented."


KU School of Medicine-Wichita