Initiative Focuses on Teaching Healthcare Value

George Sawaya, MD, UCSF professor and Director of the Training Initiative for the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value (CHV)

As part of ongoing efforts to promote teaching healthcare value at UC San Francisco and beyond, education innovators from across campus gathered for a half-day retreat on March 21st at the UCSF Library.

“We’re putting an emphasis not only on the critical importance of teaching healthcare value, but also on bringing leaders in this area together to share ideas and align efforts,” said George Sawaya, MD, a UCSF professor and Director of the Training Initiative for the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value (CHV), which sponsored the event.

The day’s activities provided an opportunity to review and prioritize various education efforts on campus that include training on healthcare value, and to set a roadmap for how these initiatives will take shape at UCSF, Sawaya said.

To define, champion and integrate high-quality education in healthcare value throughout training programs for educators, clinicians, researchers and healthcare leaders.

Aims of the CHV Training Initiative

To kick off the event, the audience heard from Molly Cooke, MD, a UCSF professor and Director of Education for Global Health Sciences across the five UCSF schools: Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing and the Graduate Division. Dr. Cooke wrote a seminal commentary urging that every physician be trained to assess not only the “effectiveness of diagnostic tests, treatments, and strategies, but also their value.” She challenged the retreat participants to consider how their charge might fit into the future of medicine in perhaps unexpected ways, including how personalized medicine may be a novel step toward cost-conscious medicine.

The keynote address was followed by small group discussions focused on four areas:

“The participants rolled up their sleeves and got to work on designing real world solutions to move this important work forward across the full spectrum of medical training,” said Chris Moriates, MD, an assistant clinical professor in the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF and an event co-organizer.

The UCSF CHV is focused on advancing rational, science-driven, and clinician-tested healthcare solutions that reduce cost and improve quality. Its work includes three initiatives: Delivery Systems, Research & Policy, and Training.

The CHV is being administered by UCSF's CTSI, a member of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards network funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (grant Number UL1 TR000004) at the National Institutes of Health.