Health systems science is a foundational platform and framework for the study and understanding of how care is delivered, how health professionals work together to deliver that care, and how the health system can improve patient care and health care delivery.
Longitudinal Curricular Threads
Our longitudinal curricular threads incorporate world-class MUSC expertise, local and national resources throughout the entirety of training, with the goal of developing knowledge and skills that are repeatedly revisited and reinforced over time to allow for deep lasting learning.
The curriculum is through a variety of modalities including on-line modules, simulation sessions, distance learning, in-person courses, independent study, and completion of projects and work products. Each resident’s progress and work products are tracked and housed in their portfolio using the MedHub system.
The main focus areas include fundamental content that is required of all trainees, as well as more advanced content that can be completed as part of each resident's individualized learning plan. The main focus areas are based on the AMA’s domains for health sciences system curriculum.
Health Science Curriculum Main Focus Areas
Health Care Structures, Processes, and Leadership
This includes interprofessional & multi-disciplinary coordination & effective teamwork; varying practice models; complex care that involves handoffs, transitions, coordination; and needs of different care environments.
Health Care Policy, Economics & Management
This focus area includes understanding practice management & health economics; combination of societal needs, funding availability, regulation, and legislation; effects of public policy, legislation and regulation on reimbursement; health economics and insurance coverage; and operational aspects that affect medicine.
Clinical Informatics & Health Information Technology
This focus area includes technology education; data issues (protection, patient security, clinical decision support; registries, prevention of adverse events, & advance care delivery; and clear documentation related to patient communication in the current environment of EMR-transparency, telehealth and telemedicine.
Population Health & Social Determinants of Health
This focus area includes evidence-based explanations for disparities in healthcare access/delivery/outcomes; and conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.
Value-Based Care
This focus area includes the quality of healthcare delivered relative to the total cost required to offer that level of care; improving health outcomes without increasing costs through efficient use of resources, reduced waste, and improved access to care; and attention to the costs of care (imaging, delivery, & patient safety).
Health Systems Improvement
This focus area includes analyzing existing models of healthcare delivery, identifying and implementing change, & studying outcomes.
Resident Quality Improvement Program
Residents at the MUSC-Regional Network participate in the Resident Incentive Program, a financially-incentived program for front line physicians to practice quality improvement, while contributing to the improvement of hospital quality and safety goals.
Benefits of the program include:
- Robust preparation of residents for the varied pay-for-performance programs in full-time practice
- Increased participation in system quality improvement with direct influence on system goals and metrics
- Improve patient quality of care at MUSC
- Clear contribution to scholarly work in quality improvement with potential for poster and research presentations
- Annual bonus for residents upon completion of QI project