Introducing the Valley Preferred/Lehigh Valley Health Network MOC QI Program
Helping providers excel in quality improvement
An independent commission of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) found that 84 percent of physicians have a desire for continuing certification to focus on practice-relevant continuing medical education. Fortunately, Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) and Valley Preferred, the Network’s aligned physician hospital organization, are providing an increasing number of opportunities for our local and regional physicians to do that, as well as streamlining the processes needed to take advantage of these opportunities.
In February 2019, the ABMS Multi-specialty Portfolio Program approved LVHN’s request for Valley Preferred to offer QI projects for Part IV credit. Valley Preferred can now designate Part IV credit for qualified QI projects it approves and award Part IV credit to physicians who meet participation requirements for those projects. This program is inclusive of almost all medical specialties and is based on the standards that guide the ABMS program for Maintenance of Certification (ABMS MOC®). These standards emphasize professionalism, patient safety, and performance improvement, and they seek to integrate readily available information from a physician’s actual clinical practice into an assessment of practice improvement.
“Providers need to maintain their board certification, and this new program serves to recognize quality improvement work they may already be doing,” says John Stoeckle, MD, CHQS, Associate Medical Director of Population Health for Valley Preferred and the Department of Family Medicine, LVHN. “We’re hoping it will continue to strengthen our quality improvement culture and allow physicians and physician assistants to get credit for meaningful work.”
Departments/divisions will be encouraged to lead QI projects for which providers can opt in, and Family Medicine can truly benefit from the program. The program goes hand-in-hand with Valley Preferred’s already-existing QI Incentive Program, which offers an incentive for a project lead through the participation component of Achieving Clinical Excellence® (ACE). Based on current continuing certification agreements, the Valley Preferred/LVHN MOC QI program is presently available to MD physicians, DO physicians, and physician assistants, with the hope of including nurse practitioners in the future.
Program leaders will be available for guidance and assistance as providers plan and execute their individual QI projects. “The MOC QI Program helps clinicians become active participants in the evaluation of their own practices,” says Michael Makela, Physician Advocacy Liaison with Valley Preferred. “Physicians can see how their practice compares to that of their peers, how it aligns with published best practices, and how it evolves over time, progressing toward the ideal: an enterprise-wide culture of quality.”
Valley Preferred is starting initial projects for the MOC QI program. Clinicians will be invited to submit ideas or join a project in fall 2019. Encourage your specialty or department leadership to participate!
For more information, contact [email protected], or [email protected]