Abstract
BACKGROUND: Medical education outcomes and clinical data exist in multiple unconnected databases, resulting in 3 problems: (1) it is difficult to connect learner outcomes with patient outcomes, (2) learners cannot be easily tracked over time through the education-training-practice continuum, and (3) no standard methodology ensures quality and privacy of the data.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to develop a Medical Education Outcomes Center (MEOC) to integrate education data and to build a framework to standardize the intake and processing of requests for using these data.
METHODS: An inventory of over 100 data sources owned or utilized by the medical school was conducted, and nearly 2 dozen of these data sources have been vetted and integrated into the MEOC. In addition, the American Medical Association (AMA) Physician Masterfile data of the University of Minnesota Medical School (UMMS) graduates were linked to the data from the National Provider Identifier (NPI) registry to develop a mechanism to connect alumni practice data to education data.
RESULTS: Over 160 data requests have been fulfilled, culminating in a range of outcomes analyses, including support of accreditation efforts. The MEOC received data on 13,092 UMMS graduates in the AMA Physician Masterfile and could link 10,443 with NPI numbers and began to explore their practice demographics. The technical and operational work to expand the MEOC continues. Next steps are to link the educational data to the clinical practice data through NPI numbers to assess the effectiveness of our medical education programs by the clinical outcomes of our graduates.
CONCLUSIONS: The MEOC provides a replicable framework to allow other schools to more effectively operate their programs and drive innovation.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | e14651 |
| Journal | JMIR Medical Education |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 1 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors wish to thank the staff, faculty, and leaders at the UMMS for their work toward educating our learners and helpful discussions related to the MEOC and our overall goals for this project. The authors would like to specially thank Robert Englander for his review of the manuscript. Funding support was provided by the UMMS. The AMA is the source for the raw physician data; tables and tabulations were prepared by the MEOC using the AMA Masterfile data. APJO received grant funding from the Josiah H Macy Jr Foundation to develop curriculum to improve diagnosis and from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to study improving diagnosis through feedback.
Publisher Copyright:
© Mark E Rosenberg, Jacqueline L Gauer, Barbara Smith, Austin Calhoun, Andrew P J Olson, Emily Melcher. Originally published in JMIR Medical Education (http://mededu.jmir.org), 26.10.2019. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Education, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mededu.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- Data analysis
- Data linkage
- Database management systems
- Medical students
- Outcome measures
- Physicians
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article