Enhancing the Science of Family Medicine
Participation in the generation of new knowledge will be integral to the activities of all family physicians and will be incorporated into family medicine training. Practice-based research will be integrated into the values, structures and processes of family medicine practices. Departments of family medicine will engage in highly collaborative research that produces new knowledge about the origins of disease and illness, how health is gained and lost, and how the provision of care can be improved. A national entity should be established to lead and fund research on the health and health care of whole people. Funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality should be increased to at least $1 billion per year.
Implementation Update (April 2005):
NAPCRG’s interpretation of Recommendation on Enhancing the Science of Family Medicine:
- The generation of new knowledge must become an essential component of what it means to be a family physician.
- Therefore, knowledge generation needs to be infused into nearly all components of the FFM plan.
NAPCRG’s approach to this thus far
- Decentralized (which makes sense when you are talking about culture change)
- Mobile task force with sufficient diversity of viewpoints and connections to be able to identify and work opportunistically on lever points to enhance the science base and research capacity of the discipline.
Eight Key Early Opportunities
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Develop primary care classification and research friendliness criteria for ERs.
- ICPC Classification (ICPC-2 book being distributed to Dept Chairs)
- Task force members have been working on various aspects of this with the American Medical Informatics Association and the National Alliance for Primary Care Informatics.
- Collaborate with ADFM in the planning of an academic health center summit.
- Link quality improvement with research
- Expand practice-based research -- link practice-based research with the AAFP’s Quality Initiative and the ABFM’s Maintenance of Certification efforts to make practice-based research relevant for everyone.
- Build research capacity in residencies and departments – through work with residency PBRNs. NAPCRG is partnering with AFMRD on several initiatives to enhance research in residency training, eg, session at 2005 Program Directors Workshop on incorporating research into residency training and session at NAPCRG on residency research and PBRN development; added AFMRD liaison to NAPCRG Board.
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Work with AAFP New Model Practice Resource Center
- We want the pilot study participants to be involved in generating and using the emerging knowledge to inform the process of practice transformation.
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This should involve
- The practice transformation facilitator and evaluators doing real-time data collection and analysis to fuel the process
- NAPCRG wants to help develop outcomes measurements for New Model demonstration projects
- Enhance research advocacy efforts -- Encourage advocacy efforts that focus on partnering to solve important health care problems for which family medicine researchers are well positioned to contribute.
- Promote research with student interest -- Making research part of what it means to be a family physician is a potential pathway to engage more of the brightest and best students in becoming family physicians.