Strategic Alliance to Consolidate and Extend Two Organizations' Historical Faculty Practice Management Data Collection and Reporting Activities

Chicago and Washington, D.C., April 11, 2001--University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) today announced that they have joined forces to develop a consolidated offering of Web-based knowledge resources and benchmarking tools to support their members' faculty physician practice management efforts.

The envisioned collaboration will combine the two organizations' historical faculty practice data collection and reporting services into a single, unified Web-based activity-the UHC-AAMC Faculty Practice Solutions Center (FPSC). The AAMC, the national organization representing the nation's 125 medical schools, major teaching hospitals and health systems, and academic societies-independently and in collaboration with other organizations provides derived clinical productivity and financial measures at the clinical department, division or section level for all major specialties. UHC, an alliance of the clinical enterprises of 85 academic health centers (AHCs), is a leading provider of knowledge resources and management tools for AHCs.

"The Solutions Center represents an important new array of management resources that will be of great value to our member institutions," said Robert Dickler, AAMC senior vice president for health care affairs. "This new and innovative partnership with UHC will lead to an increased understanding of the state of faculty practice plans and the issues they face and strengthen the AAMC's representation and service to its members."

The UHC CPT Data Base, which will serve as the foundation for the FPSC, provides practical, statistically rigorous information, comparative clinical activity benchmarking data, and flexible practice management tools. The Data Base contains procedure-level detail from 50 faculty group practices nationally, and includes more than 20,000 physicians from over 60 clinical disciplines.

"Data driven management is an imperative for any effective organization, and this is especially true for physician practices in this challenging environment, said David Burnett, M.D. UHC vice president. "We are excited to collaborate with the AAMC to help meet this need. The consolidation will reduce duplication of services, achieve economies of scale, and provide an expanded and enriched data set for both organizations' members. The Solutions Center will offer a single, seamless faculty group practice data service that combines the best features of both organizations' current clinical reporting initiatives and extends the activity to meet critical gaps in the academic practice community's evolving clinical management information needs."

Targeted for launch in summer 2001, the Solutions Center will include content on a range of areas including clinical productivity, financial and operational management data. At the heart of the Solutions Center will be a portfolio of benchmarking tools, supported by state-of-the-art applications and technology that facilitates flexible/dynamic reporting, paperless data collection, and participant networking/information exchange in support of faculty practices.

"The Solutions Center will provide a powerful and critical tool previously unavailable to academic medicine," said Albert Bothe, Jr., MD, executive director of The University of Chicago Practice Plan, and chair of the Solutions Center Advisory Group. "Further, in the current health care environment of limited resources, by consolidating the data collection and reporting processes the collaboration will allow members to focus resources on applying the data to their management needs."

###
The University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) advances knowledge, fosters collaboration, and promotes change to help members compete in their respective health care markets. In keeping with this mission, UHC helps members pool resources, create economies of scale, improve clinical and operating efficiencies, and influence the direction and delivery of health care.

###
The Association of American Medical Colleges represents the 125 accredited U.S. medical schools; the 16 accredited Canadian medical schools; some 400 major teaching hospitals, including 74 Veterans Administration medical centers; 91 academic and professional societies representing over 100,000 faculty members; and the nation's 67,000 medical students and 102,000 residents.

Contact Us    © 1995-2008 AAMC    Terms and Conditions    Privacy Statement