Wilsie Bishop, DPA, MSN, Former Senior Vice President for Academics & Vice President for Health Affairs, Eastern Tennessee State University:
The AAHC AIM Program was a transformational experience for our Academic Health Sciences Center. The depth of experience and knowledge that the team of consultants shared with us, as well as the intensive self-study that we did in preparation for their on-site visit, allowed us to look strategically at our organization. Through this process the critical need for improved branding that would better communicate the complexity of our clinical care delivery led to a new identity for our collective five health professions colleges to be known as ETSU Health. During the COVID pandemic, being “ETSU Health” sent a powerful message to our community as we became the recognized care delivery and media experts, opened the first community drive through testing site in the region, and provided vaccine clinics within the community and to the homeless. From Public Health to front line care givers, our region turned to ETSU Health for education, research, treatment, and care. This visible sign of the strategic and infrastructure changes that we made as a result of participating in the AIM Program has made us a stronger team and helps us serve our community better.
Jose Otavio Costa Auler Jr, MD, PhD, Dean, Faculty of Medicine University of Sao Paulo
Participating in the AIM Program offered FMUSP a unique opportunity to assess one of our greatest challenges: Inter-professional education in a geographical and administrative organization context. Using the AIM assessment tool followed by the site visit, enabled us to recognize that the achievement of the goals proposed in our Strategic Plan FMUSP 2020 will require enhancement of interprofessional education and practice, reinforcing current existing initiatives, and creating new integration opportunities. Important steps were taken for the purpose of aligning our Medical School with its long-term objectives:
- Establish an inter-professional workshop for undergraduate students in key areas of prevention and care—including pain, rehabilitation, palliative care, disease prevention, etc.—as part of the regular undergraduate program using the community healthcare units and the hospital as an integrative scenario.
- Strengthen and support the extracurricular activities with an inter-professional approach, such as Academic Leagues and Extension projects.
- Include inter-professional activities during the internship/rotations.
- Develop inter-professional activities in other residency programs and strengthen these activities in ongoing inter-professional programs (multi professional residency).
The AIM program helped us to make the idea of interprofessional education stronger within the institution, and I am sure that the recommendations from the consultants will certainly guide us and shape our next steps.
Dan Rahn, MD, Chancellor, University of Arkansas Medical School
“Participating in the AIM Program™ offered UAMS a valuable opportunity to assess its programs specifically within the framework of how they align our institution with our stated health improvement mission. The timing was perfect since the past two years have brought rapid and transformative change as we almost simultaneously transitioned to a single EMR platform, created an integrated clinical enterprise, introduced a student information system, converted to an expense-based budgeting and consolidated student and faculty support services across all colleges.
Using the AIM assessment tool and then hosting a constructive site visit connected all of those changes into a coherent story that illustrates how we moved from our strategic vision to reengineering how we deliver care, manage data, ensure sustainability, align education, research and patient care and ultimately impact population health. The recommendations from the unbiased and expert review will help us shape our next steps.”
Randy Hall, PhD, Vice President of Research, University of Southern California
“The AIM Program™ catalyzed USC to assess and appraise, for the first time, the linkages between the three pillars of our academic health center: research, education and clinical care, spanning the entire university. Our process began by identifying program leaders in all of these areas -- both inside the university and at our partner institutions -- and then reaching out to them to gain their perspectives on strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement. Through conversations, written comments, and a comprehensive review of our strategic plans, processes and financial reports, we prepared a comprehensive self-assessment. This nearly 100 page document was provided to the AIM Program™'s expert consultants, as well as distributed internally, in preparation for a three-day site visit.
The site visit included more than 80 participants, giving the consultants the opportunity to learn about the successes, challenges and aspirations of our health leaders, and to engage in serious discussions about how we can elevate the stature and impact of USC through health research, education and care. We appreciate the on-point feedback provided in our close-out session, and look forward to implementing recommendations after we receive their full written report.”
Ratna Sitompul, MD, PhD, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Indonesia
“We learned about the vision, mission, and value of the Association of Academic Health Center International (AAHCI) in 2008; ever since, the Faculty of Medicine Universitas Indonesia (FMUI) and Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital (CMGH) have considered it strategically important to enhance alignment between education, research, and clinical care. In early 2016, we decided to formally join the AAHCI Aligned Institutional (AIM) Program. The decision was based upon three fundamental needs: (1) to review the degree of alignment between FMUI and CMGH, which is based on the combined institutions’ strategic plan and shared KPIs; (2) to assess target areas of growth for improving alignment of these two strongly collaborative institutions; and (3) to provide a model for the development of academic health centers in the other 83 medical schools in Indonesia.
Since the establishment of FMUI and CMGH in the early 1900s, the two institutions have built a strong and mutually beneficial and functional collaboration, resulting in valuable progress in our education, research, and clinical services. Despite this progress, some challenges still remain, including improvements in alignment. The challenges, especially in areas of finance and human resources, cannot be overcome unless both institutions achieved a complete structural alignment.
During our participation in this phase of the AIM Program™, we engaged in a valuable discussions with leaders, our workforce, students, patients, and various stakeholders to fulfill the requirements of the AIM tool. It was sometimes challenging to summarize the results of the discussions as our documentation for various meetings and events in both institutions was far from perfect. However, we were able to develop detailed measurable elements for each component of the AIM Tool as a means to improve functions. We believe those measurable elements will be useful for broader implementation of the tool in Indonesia. We also feel that the AAHCI consultants gave us constructive comments and suggestions which helped provide us with an important, straightforward, and fundamental recommendations to improve our level of alignment. We strongly believe that the AAHCI consultants have helped us to enhance mission alignment in our education, research, and clinical program to respond to the challenges of the 21st century healthcare environment, especially in Indonesia. Naturally, input from experienced peers is always welcome in an ever-learning environment and as we move forward to improve our institutions. We want to express our deepest gratitude to the consultants and for the opportunity to participate in the program in this important journey.”
Daehee Kang, MD, PhD, Dean, Seoul National University College of Medicine
“Seoul National University College of Medicine recently participated in the development phase of the AIM Program™. Our consultants were excellent in diagnosing the current status and dynamics of our medical school and affiliated hospital systems, and did their best to meet and interview many members of our university and hospital in a limited amount of time. By experiencing the AIM site visit and consultation from AIM team, we learned a lot from the experienced consultants and were able to gain insights and new perspectives. Also, we realized the strengths of our AHC and the challenges that we face. To strengthen our current weakness, we will try to identify ways to integrate other health and health-related schools into the AHC, create inter-disciplinary implementation teams and committees to drive strategic initiatives, develop a structure that facilitates a strong linkage between research, innovation, and clinical practice, and align HR functions such as recruitment and appraisal of clinical staff. Furthermore, SNUCM and SNUH will try to align academic activities or combined activities with local health care needs, and facilitate interdisciplinary research, education, and clinical practice as recommended and guided by the consultants.
Throughout this fruitful experience, we will keep trying to reform and improve our organization to be a globally leading medical school by developing structures and processes that facilitate further integration. We appreciate once again the AIM consulting team’s effort and hard work.”