ABIM Foundation Focus – Summer 2017

Choosing Wisely… On Your iPhone!

With hopes to further implementation of the campaign across the country, a new Choosing Wisely app is now available for download for iPhone, with iPad and Android releases coming soon.

The new app features all 510 of the specialty society recommendations as well as over 150 patient-friendly resources, with new content being added regularly. Physicians can search for recommendations by keywords, as well as filter results by topic area, society, age, setting and service. Patient materials are organized similarly, by health topic (e.g., “common cold” or “back pain”), medical specialty, society and age. Per the goals of the campaign to facilitate conversations around unnecessary treatments, physicians are also able to share specific recommendations and/or relevant materials with their patients via email or text.

The new Choosing Wisely app brings evidence-based recommendations into the palms of physicians’ hands. They are able to quickly access information and share it with their patients, making it a valuable resource for both.
 

Bridging Gaps to Better Health

The 2017 ABIM Foundation Forum – Bridging Gaps to Better Health took place July 29–August 1. The aim of the meeting was to engage multi-stakeholders in conversations around social determinants of health and ways in which physicians and the organizations they work in can integrate community services to improve health care outcomes. The Forum Background paper highlights both the challenges and opportunities facing physicians and their organizations.

The Forum featured several innovators who have spearheaded projects that have integrated community services and reported out on their results. Participants shared stories and ideas on how health care organizations can work outside of their walls and generated action items to bring back to their home institutions.
 

New Program Encourages Students to Choose Wisely

In late 2017, Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin will launch a new national program designed to identify and coach 40 medical student leaders to drive health care change at institutions across the country. The program will be supported by the ABIM Foundation, The Macy Foundation, Choosing Wisely Canada and Costs of Care.

The U.S. version of STARS (Students and Trainees Advocating for Resource Stewardship) will mirror the successful STARS program started by Choosing Wisely Canada and University of Toronto in 2015 with support from ABIM Foundation. During the first year of the Canadian program, medical students have led several projects to advance Choosing Wisely®.

The new stateside initiative intends to serve as an incubator for first-year medical students to:

• Review the Choosing Wisely campaign and medical society recommendations with their peers;
• Inspire change locally to address areas of overuse or waste; and
• Use concrete tools to drive change at their medical schools to improve the value of patient care they provide as they progress through their training.

The U.S. STARS program will kick off with a one-day summit comprised of large group sessions, workshops and informal networking. Following the event, students will be invited to join a community where they can communicate via a learning network hosted on Facebook as well as email to share stories of success and challenges. They will also be able to join ABIM Foundation’s existing Teaching Value in Health Care learning network. The goal is for these students to launch their own local programs and Choosing Wisely initiatives which will reach across the country.

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