The Project is set up as a set of educational programs sponsored by four primary care departments - Family Medicine, Internal Medicine (General Medicine and Geriatric divisions), Obstetrics/Gynecology, and Pediatrics. The Project Core is made up of leadership from each department, as well as the Associate Dean for Graduate Medical Education and a representative from M-Care, the Project's managed care partner. The Core provides direction and coordination for the Project's curriculum development, its implementation, and its evaluation.

Core Activities

In mid-October the Medicaid Managed Care web site was at last up and running. Developed entirely by Core staff, the site provides an overview of the Project, examples of Core-developed curriculum, learning materials, department-specific program descriptions, and links to other relevant sources of information. The address for the web site is http://www.med.umich.edu/mmc.

The high spot of the month was the roll out of the new Medicaid Managed Care rotation in the Obstetrics/Gynecology Department. This rotation involves learners with M-Care via committee meeting attendance, includes participation in the Pediatrics Department's seminar series, and requires completion of the Tufts CD-ROM on managed care, in addition to clinical activities and structured reading assignments. The schedule of the OB/G rotation is included on the Project's web site.

Much time was spent during October and early November preparing the Core Data Set, the annual report for the Project. Information was collected from the Core physicians of the four primary care departments involved with the Project as well as from the administrative staff from those departments, the School of Nursing, and The Corner Health Center, one of our community teaching sites. Statistics needed for Table One of the Core Data Set were obtained with help from the University Hospital's Billing Department, Reimbursement Department, the Clinical Information Systems Department, and the Clinical Delivery Systems financial operations office. This report, along with feedback concerning a proposed Post-Graduate Survey, constituted the completion of the homework assignments given during the September meeting at the Michigan Public Health Institute with the Department of Community Health.

Core leadership met on 10/20 and 11/17 and discussed faculty development, budgets, the Core Data Set, the Project's web site, the Tufts CD-ROM, and other matters. A Core budget meeting took place on 11/3 to consider the effects of the no-cost extension to the grant for the Project.

After a conference call on October 18 with Core leadership and Dr. Jan Shorey, director of the residency program at the Harvard Pilgrim Medical Center, plans for a site visit were finally put in place.

Copies of the Project's "Caring in the Community" videotape were sent to all members of Congress from Michigan in mid-October.

On November 16 and 17 four Core members participated in the University of Michigan Medical School's annual Medical Education Day. The event consisted of small group workshops, posters, and computer demonstrations on this year's theme "Innovations in Medical Education."

The new rotation for the Obstetrics/Gynecology department trained its first resident in October. Established rotations for learners in Geriatrics, Pediatrics, Family Medicine, and General Medicine took place as scheduled.

Next Steps

Collecting data from the varied far-flung administrative units of the UM Medical System, whether they be statistics for the Core Data Set or data needed to develop teaching modules, continues to prove challenging.

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