Competition Spreads Choosing Wisely Across Oregon
Earlier this year the Oregon Medical Association (OMA), a grantee of the ABIM Foundation, launched a competition to encourage doctors, health systems and institutions to incorporate the Choosing Wisely® campaign into daily practice.
The Choosing Wisely in Oregon Challenge – inspired by the Society of Hospital Medicine’s Choosing Wisely Case Study Competition and the Teaching Value and Choosing Wisely® Challenge – sought innovative projects or ideas for interventions to advance the ideals of Choosing Wisely among practicing clinicians.
Judges reviewed 16 submissions based on their feasibility, use and dissemination of Choosing Wisely materials, and alignment with the applicant’s scope of work and organizational goals.
The Coalition of Community Health Clinics (CCHC) and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) were among the seven organizations recognized as winners of the challenge.
CCHC, a Portland-area network of 14 safety-net clinics, proposed an idea to incorporate Choosing Wisely into its existing quality improvement strategies and forums. Program manager Genevieve Ellis said regular CCHC meetings present an ideal opportunity to spread the campaign to 40 community clinic administrators and staff, who serve 57,000 patients.
“We would start to introduce the campaign during those discussions and distribute Choosing Wisely materials, including posters and wallet cards, which can be shared with patients,” Ellis said.
CCHC’s goals for the next year are to bring clinics together for two meetings focused specifically on Choosing Wisely, encourage at least 10 clinics to post or distribute campaign information, and evaluate these efforts by sending a questionnaire to participating clinics.
Kim Irish, MS, HCM, CPHQ, Quality Manager for OHSU School of Medicine’s Graduate Medical Education (GME) division, is hoping her Challenge proposal will motivate nearly 800 residents and fellows to study Choosing Wisely recommendations.
She proposed a Choosing Wisely Housestaff Competition that would challenge GME trainees and teams to design a project around one recommendation from a relevant specialty society. After education around Choosing Wisely and how to design a performance improvement project, they will be asked to develop and implement an intervention, collect data, create a sustainability plan and submit an abstract to the Third Annual OHSU GME Performance Excellence Poster Symposium next February.
“Our housestaff are on the front lines,” Irish said. “They are in the prime position to effect change and implement Choosing Wisely to reduce unnecessary testing and increase the quality of care our patients receive.”
Congratulations to all Choosing Wisely in Oregon Challenge winners:
- Judy Richardson, MD, of the Clinical Advisory Panel (CAP) of the Columbia Gorge Coordinated Care Organization (CCO)
- Eric Hansen, MD, of the Oregon Anesthesiology Group and cardiothoracic surgical program at ProvidencePortlandMedicalCenter
- OHSU School of Medicine students Kelsey Priest, MPH, and Emily Harvey, with faculty members Paul Gorman, MD, Peter Sullivan, MD, David Pollack, MD and Cliff Coleman, MD, MPH
- Ryan Palmer, EdD, Benjamin Schneider, MD and Fran Biagioli, MD, of the OHSU Department of Family Medicine
- Linyee Chang, MD, of St. Charles Cancer Center
