A Veteran Affairs Boston Healthcare System clinic is reconciling the tension between quick outpatient visits and time-intensive training of future healthcare providers.
Academic Medicine published the paper about the 25-year experience of the Ambulatory Diagnostic and Treatment Center Outpatient Clinic.
Here are six highlights:
1. The ADTC emphasizes education for future healthcare providers by fostering an outpatient "intensivist" model.
2. The clinic sees specific patients with unstable and evolving conditions, like unexplained weight loss. This provides medical students with a range of opportunities in various conditions.
3. Patients receive quick outpatient resolutions of clinical issues and rapid follow-up appointments, simultaneously offering a better patient experience.
4. Boston Medical Center includes the clinic as a core rotation for residents and medical students. Because of the fast-paced environment, students learn how to make complicated diagnoses and combine knowledge to arrive at commonly managed conditions.
5. ADTC clinicians look for symptoms that busier providers in primary care clinics may overlook.
6. One attending physician, three internal medicine residents and a fourth-year medical student staff the clinic.
"Without this model, many of these patients may be admitted to the hospital for expedited work up, sometimes unnecessarily and contributing to cost or referred to many subspecialists," said Richard Serrao, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Boston University School of medicine, and medical director of ADTC.
