News Briefs: Week of March 1-5

This roundup includes the following news briefs:

The AAFP has reviewed and granted Prescribed credit for a new performance improvement CME activity from the National Committee for Quality Assurance, or NCQA. The free online program, which is offered through NCQA's Quality Improvement Connection, focuses on enhancing management of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

The activity is designed to educate physicians who provide care for children with ADHD about optimal patient care and allow them assess how well their practices are managing that care. Using a confidential platform, learners can identify performance gaps and access resources that can help them overcome barriers to ADHD treatment and improve patient care.

The AAFP has designated the NCQA program as acceptable for as many as 20 Prescribed credits from the AAFP.

Physicians and other interested parties have until March 9 to tell the National Committee for Quality Assurance, or NCQA, what patient experience topics the organization should include in its next version of evaluation criteria for medical homes.

The organization will consider a core set of topics that may include such items as patient wait times, after-hours access and continuity of care. The Web-based form asks participants to choose the five most important and the five least important items for the committee to consider. All topic choices are based on patient surveys and experiences of care.

Beginning in March, family medicine and other primary care physicians working part time at facilities approved by the National Health Service Corps, or NHSC, are eligible to apply to the NHSC demonstration program for part-time loan repayment.

The NHSC defines "part time" as physicians who are working from 20-39 hours per week, at least 45 weeks per year. The criteria for participation in the part-time demonstration program are similar to those for NHSC's Loan Repayment Program.

Interested physicians can sign up to be notified when the application bulletin becomes available.

U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, M.D., M.B.A., recently announced a new initiative that will give consumers more options for recording and storing their families' health information in a free Web-based account.

According to Feb. 24 news release, Benjamin's Family Health History Initiative, a collaboration between HHS and Microsoft HealthVault, will provide new features and expanded access to My Family Health Portrait project, an existing online source that serves as a vehicle for collecting patient information into a medically useful format.

HealthVault is a personal health application platform that allows patients to share health information with physicians, family members, pharmacists and other third-party health professionals. Benjamin, a family physician and AAFP member, said in the release that expanding the capacity of the existing health portrait project will "help individuals make knowledgeable health decisions with their doctors."

Students and residents are invited to use a new online information service -- "Ask the Expert" -- sponsored by the AAFP's International Activities Office.

Questions about global health in general or about international medicine involvement in particular can be e-mailed to Alexander Ivanov, international activities manager for the AAFP. A panel from the American Council on Education's Center for International Health Initiatives will respond, and the responses will be posted on the International Activities section of the Academy'sWeb site, said Ivanov.

Selected questions and answers also will be published in the AAFP's International Update Newsletter. In the Winter 2009-10 issue of the newsletter (7-page PDF; About PDFs), for example, Cynthia Haq, M.D., who is professor of family medicine and population health sciences and director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Global Health, answered a question about how a family medicine residency program can prepare students for international service.