Dear NEOMED Community,
As I reflect upon the past four months since the LCME accreditation site team departed, the most important thing to say to you is thank you. Thank you for the hard work you have done, you are doing, and you likely will continue to do. Your support and commitment to our College of Medicine is selfless, patient and collaborative. For this, I am incredibly grateful.
As we continue to work diligently to make improvements and address issues that were brought to light through the LCME self-study process and the site visit, we will share both the work and provide its status in regular updates. The first update is attached. This chart will be updated regularly and distributed to faculty, staff and students via The Pulse, the Dean’s Message, student “Lunch with the Deans,” and “Faculty-Dean Town Halls.” Updates will also be posted on the COM website as well.
To guide this work, the College has established a continuous quality improvement (CQI) process for regularly monitoring the performance of our strategic plan and compliance with the LCME accreditation elements. The purpose of the monitoring is to proactively identify opportunities for performance and compliance improvement so that issues are addressed and resolved. This metric and data aligned CQI process will guide the prioritization of our strategic plan, enabling us to advance the future of the College and our mission “to inspire our students to become exemplary patient care centered physicians and to improve the health and quality of life of the communities of Ohio and beyond, including those both diverse and underserved.”
Recently, I charged a group of faculty and staff with experience in accreditation, continuous quality improvement and strategic planning, to provide oversight of the CQI monitoring process and respond to performance and compliance issues. The Continuous Quality Improvement -Strategic Plan (CQI-SP) subcommittee, is working with all COM stakeholders to implement corrective action steps for the accreditation elements preliminarily identified as unsatisfactory by the LCME team during their exit interview with us. In addition, the College will soon be unveiling an enhanced COM website that includes a section dedicated to “Continuous Quality Improvement and Accreditation.”
I see positive and exciting changes all around! I hope that you do as well. I believe we are all committed to a common goal: to ensure our COM is strong, sustainable and successful.
Questions about CQI and the strategic planning process can be directed to Allison Hawkes at ahawkes@neomed.edu.
Thank you for your commitment and support!
Elisabeth Young, M.D.
VP for Health Affairs
Dean of the College of Medicine
Professor of Internal Medicine