The Project is organized 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 the months of April and May the focus of the Core was to disseminate newly created teaching materials and to begin preparations for creating a final report documenting the activities of the Medicaid Managed Care Project.

Two new teaching modules focused on key managed care concepts, Resource Utilization and Patient Satisfaction, have been developed with the assistance of M-Care and the University of Michigan Hospital. Using data specific to the departments of Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics, three different iterations of each module were created. Sufficient copies have been made so that a year's worth of rotations in each department will be able to profit from these modules. These copies were made available to department core leadership at the Project Core meeting of May 17. A meeting in late May with Core leadership and Rita L. Mitchell, a Systems Analyst with the Guidelines Utilization, Implementation, Development & Evaluation Studies department of the Office of Clinical Affairs at the University of Michigan Hospital, reviewed data suitable for use in the third and final teaching module, on HEDIS measures, and a outline for that module was developed.

Copies of "Women's Health Throughout the Life Cycle," a CD-ROM learning tool recently developed for the Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics, were purchased for distribution to Core faculty in Family Medicine, Geriatrics, General Medicine, and Pediatrics. Dr. Hope Haefner, the Core faculty member from the OB/Gyn department, was responsible for creating portions of this CD and has her own copy.

Throughout April the newly hired medical writer, Kathryn Clark, held meetings with all the Core Faculty and staff on an individual basis to collect information about each department's grant-related activity for the Project Final Report. Notebooks of curricular material were collected from the Family Medicine, Obstetrics/Gynecology, and Pediatrics departments.

Core leadership has determined that the report should consist of an executive summary for the entire Project, followed by a Project-wide impact statement. Each participating department will then describe, in summary, its Project activities, providing copies of curricular materials, evaluation instruments, and rotations descriptions, concluding with a department-specific impact statement. Appendices will be included on the Project's evaluation results and on the Project's links to the COGME curriculum learning objectives.

In mid-May there was a budget-related concern, stemming from an equipment purchase which had not been specifically authorized by the Core or the Department of Community Health. After a series of phone calls and e-mail exchanges it was determined that the equipment was being used in a training seminar developed for the Project and the purchase was approved. A formal budget meeting was held on May 17.

Project Core meetings were held on April 26 and May 17, to introduce the new teaching modules and to discuss departmental progress and sustainability.

Department Activities

The Project-related rotations in Family Medicine, Geriatrics, and Pediatrics continued as scheduled in April and May.

New curricular material developed by the Family Medicine Department was introduced into the adolescent component of the rotation at The Corner Health Center in April.

Administrative delays in obtaining complete and timely information concerning Project-related expenditures from each of the participating departments have entailed extra efforts on the part of the budget analyst in her efforts to insure accurate accounting of Project funds.

The learning curve for the medical writer, while not steep, has been long. Acquainting the writer with the different departments of the Project and the many different activities within each department has taken longer than expected.

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