By Amanda E.H. Pritchard
Interprofessional training is key to improving the quality of primary care, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing alumna Traci Solt, DNP, MSN, FACHE, NEA-BC, CCRN, CCM (DNP 2019), who serves as the Director for Clinical Services at the Veterans Health Administration’s National Office of Primary Care. Recently, Solt served as an expert panelist at the Primary Care Collaborative Annual Conference, where she highlighted the success of the training model.
“About 70% of our physicians in the U.S. had some training in the department, and the VA trains around 113,000 health care professionals annually,” Solt said.
In 2010, the VA incorporated the Patient-aligned Care Team model, which serves as their version of the patient-centered medical home model. The department also established a training program to educate providers about the patient-centered medical home model and how to be part of an interprofessional team.
Solt shared successful outcomes of the training program including improvement in staff and training satisfaction, as well as improvements in the quality of chronic disease management.
Through these successes, the training program allowed Solt to determine that there were more timely mental health referrals, and a decrease in emergency department and related hospitalizations.
Primary Care Collaborative President and CEO, Ann Greiner, complimented Solt on the information she shared, saying, “You demonstrated that it is possible and highly effective to train and practice in teams.”