Summary:
In this episode, Smarter Care Virginia lead evaluator, Dr. John Mafi speaks with SCV faculty member, Dr. Howard Beckman about the best communication strategies to utilize in order to influence clinicians to change their behavior around low-value health services.
Our Guests:
John N. Mafi, MD, MPH is an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA where he also practices and teaches general medicine and primary care. He also serves as an Affiliated Natural Scientist in Health Policy at RAND Corporation. Dr. Mafi completed his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University and then went on to complete medical school at Case Western Reserve University. He then finished his internal medicine residency training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2012, where he also served as Chief Medical Resident in 2013-2014. Dr. Mafi completed the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and earned his MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015.
Dr. Mafi’s research focuses on quality and value measurement and how electronic health records can improve the value of care among older adults. He has led several national analyses assessing the epidemiological trends and predictors of harmful or low value care, or patient care that provides no net benefit in specific clinical scenarios. He is currently leading several national studies and working to leverage electronic health records to measure and improve the value of healthcare delivery among older adults.
Howard Beckman, M.D., FACP, FAACH is Director of Strategic Innovation at Common Ground Health where he utilizes his experience in group and organizational facilitation and qualitative research. In this position, his work focuses on two communitywide quality and value collaboratives. One focuses on improving the management of high blood pressure communitywide by integrating best medical practices with community engagement. The second project is the reduction of preventable hospitalizations and ED visits.
Dr. Beckman’s administrative and research interests have led to a national focus on creating and promoting effective partnerships. He served as Clinical Director for the California Quality Collaborative’s Efficiency Collaborative and a consultant to such diverse groups as the American Board of Internal Medicine, AHRQ, the American Medical Association, California Healthcare Foundation, RAND, MHQP, Consumer Reports, Massachusetts BlueCross BlueShield, and the Massachusetts Medical Society. His work on partnership between physicians, medical groups and health plans, has been published in Health Affairs, the Annals of Internal Medicine, AJMC, AJMQ, and Healthcare Management and by the Commonwealth Fund.
Dr. Beckman is a clinical professor of Medicine and Family Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He has been a faculty member in Rochester since 1990. Prior to that he was an associate professor of Medicine at Wayne State University School of Medicine where he attended medical school, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine.