VA Ann Arbor Health System Service

           

The VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System (VAAAHS) Medicine Service strives to deliver the highest quality care to Veterans while fostering a culture of scholarship, continuous improvement, and excellence in medical education. Each general medicine team is multi-disciplinary with representation from medical providers, care coordinators, pharmacists, social workers, and other health professionals. Learners rotate with renowned leaders and educators chosen based on the merits of their superb teaching abilities.

The Hospital Outcomes Program of Excellence (HOPE) focuses on enhancing patient safety, efficiency, communication, and education. This program has created many helpful resources including a comprehensive set of landmark articles (The Nifty Fifty) and suggestions for success in clinical rotations (The Seven Suggestions). The VA’s numerous educational offerings include daily senior report, lunchtime conferences, intern report, and multi-disciplinary morbidity and mortality conferences, covering topics relevant to all medical subspecialties. Medical students enjoy immersive, interactive educational sessions with health system leaders including Chief of Medicine Rounds and the M3 Preceptorship series. Hospitalist leaders guide the M4 Hospital Medicine sub-internship, a unique clinical rotation complete with an integrated quality improvement project. The VA Chief Resident of Quality and Safety leads improvement efforts and educates colleagues in ensuring safe and effective patient care. The VA consult fellow of the month program recognizes outstanding service and communication from consulting fellows on subspecialty services.

Members of the section of Hospital Medicine provide direct care for Veterans on the “Blue Medicine” inpatient service and in the short stay unit. Hospitalists field all outside hospital transfer requests. In addition to their clinical duties, all members have individual protected time for quality improvement efforts to improve patient care processes at the VAAAHS and Michigan Medicine as well as to further their own academic pursuits.