[caption id="attachment_16284" align="alignright" width="300"]
From left: Residents Brice Lefler, Jeremy Halbe, Lauren Porras, Alexandra Clark, and faculty members Daniella Zipkin and Alex Cho visited Washington, D.C. as part of an opportunity to learn about legislative advocacy. Photo courtesy of Daniella Zipkin.[/caption]
As part of the Duke Internal Medicine Residency Program’s Ambulatory Care Leadership Track (ACLT), four Duke internal medicine residents traveled to Washington, D.C. last spring to meet with Congressional representatives and learn about legislative advocacy.
The trip was an opportunity for residents, Lauren Porras, MD; Jeremy Halbe, MD; Brice Lefler, MD; and Alexandra Clark, MD, to get practical experience in legislative advocacy. The residents are part of the residency program’s Ambulatory Care Leadership Track, a training pathway for physicians planning careers as leaders and clinicians in primary care or ambulatory subspecialty medicine.
While in Washington, the residents met with the staff of Congressional representatives for their hometowns – Houston, Miami, Durham and Jacksonville, N.C. – accompanied by Catherine Liao, assistant director for government relations in the Duke University Health System Office of Government Relations, who helped the residents prepare for the trip. In addition, the residents met with Paul Vick, associate vice president for government relations for the health system and medical center, to learn about what it is like to advocate on behalf of particular issues that are important to Duke Medicine.
From there, the residents were asked to come up with a short list of issues they would be interested in discussing with legislative staff in Washington, said Alex Cho, MD, MBA, assistant program director in the residency program and assistant professor of medicine (General Internal Medicine), who helped organize the trip along with Daniella Zipkin, MD, associate professor of medicine (General Internal Medicine).
Ultimately, the residents chose two issues to present to legislative staff: adjusting the methodology for the federal Hospital Readmission Reduction Program to include socioeconomic status as a factor when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assign penalties to hospitals for frequent rehospitalization of Medicare patients, and expanding the scope of health risks that qualify for reimbursement by Medicare for intensive behavioral counseling with a physician.
Both issues are ones the residents have encountered in their work at Duke. Dr. Lefler said she chose and researched Medicare’s hospital readmission penalties.
“As residents, we admit and discharge patients all the time,” Lefler said. “We work so hard to discharge a patient safely and despite our best efforts, some patients come back within a few days or a week.”
The residents researched and developed fact sheets on both issues that they presented, which described the issue and what they were asking Congress to do to address it. They also practiced their presentations with the help of fellow resident Nick Rohrhoff, MD, who, as a medical student, served as the American Medical Association’s Government Relations Advocacy Fellow, as well as Ms. Liao and Mr. Vick.
Lefler said because this was their first time meeting with Congressional staffers, the residents prepared a lot.
“I think our presentations were well received, especially because (staffers) were hearing from people on the ground who are affected by these problems every day,” Lefler said. “We shared patient stories to make it more real for our audience. It was easy to talk about our experiences as physicians.”
“The residents who went were incredibly polished and really impressed our government affairs office,” Cho said. “It is important for physicians to be able to explain an issue. We explain things all the time to our patients in the trusted role we are in as physicians but being able to do that on behalf of the public, our colleagues and patients is important.”
Lefler said though she is not very political, she is now more interested in being aware of the issues that affect her patients and medical practice.
“I feel more empowered and confident that I can advocate for myself and my patients,” she said. “It was fun to work with residents and faculty in a very different kind of arena.”
Cho said there are several things he hopes the residents learned from the trip, including how approachable the halls of power are, how to frame an issue in a way that is digestible and persuasive, a better understanding of the breadth and limitations of elected officials’ options for actions, a greater knowledge of how the system of government works, and an appreciation for how important it can be for physicians to be vocal participants in the representative democracy.
“The chance to do legislative advocacy really rounds out the ACLT experience,” Cho said. “There is a real need for physicians to be leaders in their practices and institutions, but physicians are generally so busy taking care of patients, and learning how to read a budget or advocate for your profession and patients is not usually part of training. This is an opportunity to fill part of that gap in residency education.”
Next year, Cho said he would like to see the ACLT program add a similar experience where residents in the ACLT pathway meet with members of the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh.
“ACLT is young and evolving; we’re just wrapping up our second year,” Cho said. “We are thrilled that we are able to continue to add to the portfolio of experiences that are available to the ACLT residents.”
[caption id="attachment_16286" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
From left: Jeremy Halbe, Lauren Porras, Catherine Liao, Alex Cho, Brice Lefler and Alexandra Clark met with Congressional staff during an Ambulatory Care Leadership Track trip to Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Daniella Zipkin.[/caption]
From left: Residents Brice Lefler, Jeremy Halbe, Lauren Porras, Alexandra Clark, and faculty members Daniella Zipkin and Alex Cho visited Washington, D.C. as part of an opportunity to learn about legislative advocacy. Photo courtesy of Daniella Zipkin.[/caption]
As part of the Duke Internal Medicine Residency Program’s Ambulatory Care Leadership Track (ACLT), four Duke internal medicine residents traveled to Washington, D.C. last spring to meet with Congressional representatives and learn about legislative advocacy.
The trip was an opportunity for residents, Lauren Porras, MD; Jeremy Halbe, MD; Brice Lefler, MD; and Alexandra Clark, MD, to get practical experience in legislative advocacy. The residents are part of the residency program’s Ambulatory Care Leadership Track, a training pathway for physicians planning careers as leaders and clinicians in primary care or ambulatory subspecialty medicine.
While in Washington, the residents met with the staff of Congressional representatives for their hometowns – Houston, Miami, Durham and Jacksonville, N.C. – accompanied by Catherine Liao, assistant director for government relations in the Duke University Health System Office of Government Relations, who helped the residents prepare for the trip. In addition, the residents met with Paul Vick, associate vice president for government relations for the health system and medical center, to learn about what it is like to advocate on behalf of particular issues that are important to Duke Medicine.
From there, the residents were asked to come up with a short list of issues they would be interested in discussing with legislative staff in Washington, said Alex Cho, MD, MBA, assistant program director in the residency program and assistant professor of medicine (General Internal Medicine), who helped organize the trip along with Daniella Zipkin, MD, associate professor of medicine (General Internal Medicine).
Ultimately, the residents chose two issues to present to legislative staff: adjusting the methodology for the federal Hospital Readmission Reduction Program to include socioeconomic status as a factor when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assign penalties to hospitals for frequent rehospitalization of Medicare patients, and expanding the scope of health risks that qualify for reimbursement by Medicare for intensive behavioral counseling with a physician.
Both issues are ones the residents have encountered in their work at Duke. Dr. Lefler said she chose and researched Medicare’s hospital readmission penalties.
“As residents, we admit and discharge patients all the time,” Lefler said. “We work so hard to discharge a patient safely and despite our best efforts, some patients come back within a few days or a week.”
The residents researched and developed fact sheets on both issues that they presented, which described the issue and what they were asking Congress to do to address it. They also practiced their presentations with the help of fellow resident Nick Rohrhoff, MD, who, as a medical student, served as the American Medical Association’s Government Relations Advocacy Fellow, as well as Ms. Liao and Mr. Vick.
Lefler said because this was their first time meeting with Congressional staffers, the residents prepared a lot.
“I think our presentations were well received, especially because (staffers) were hearing from people on the ground who are affected by these problems every day,” Lefler said. “We shared patient stories to make it more real for our audience. It was easy to talk about our experiences as physicians.”
“The residents who went were incredibly polished and really impressed our government affairs office,” Cho said. “It is important for physicians to be able to explain an issue. We explain things all the time to our patients in the trusted role we are in as physicians but being able to do that on behalf of the public, our colleagues and patients is important.”
Lefler said though she is not very political, she is now more interested in being aware of the issues that affect her patients and medical practice.
“I feel more empowered and confident that I can advocate for myself and my patients,” she said. “It was fun to work with residents and faculty in a very different kind of arena.”
Cho said there are several things he hopes the residents learned from the trip, including how approachable the halls of power are, how to frame an issue in a way that is digestible and persuasive, a better understanding of the breadth and limitations of elected officials’ options for actions, a greater knowledge of how the system of government works, and an appreciation for how important it can be for physicians to be vocal participants in the representative democracy.
“The chance to do legislative advocacy really rounds out the ACLT experience,” Cho said. “There is a real need for physicians to be leaders in their practices and institutions, but physicians are generally so busy taking care of patients, and learning how to read a budget or advocate for your profession and patients is not usually part of training. This is an opportunity to fill part of that gap in residency education.”
Next year, Cho said he would like to see the ACLT program add a similar experience where residents in the ACLT pathway meet with members of the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh.
“ACLT is young and evolving; we’re just wrapping up our second year,” Cho said. “We are thrilled that we are able to continue to add to the portfolio of experiences that are available to the ACLT residents.”
[caption id="attachment_16286" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] From left: Jeremy Halbe, Lauren Porras, Catherine Liao, Alex Cho, Brice Lefler and Alexandra Clark met with Congressional staff during an Ambulatory Care Leadership Track trip to Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Daniella Zipkin.[/caption]