Academic Detailing in a Time of Uncertainty

Director's Letter | Mike Fischer, MD, MS
The entire health care system is grappling with uncertainty. What will happen to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act? Will clinicians and health systems face major changes in how they are expected to provide care and how they are reimbursed? Will state and local public health agencies have support for the many initiatives undertaken in recent years?

As we wait for answers to these questions, the role of academic detailing is more important than ever. AD programs will face new challenges, and will need to understand how AD can be adapted to fit changing constraints and still have a beneficial impact on clinician engagement, the quality of care, and patient outcomes. At NaRCAD, we look at this unpredictable environment and see a mandate to collaborate and innovate, working with our partners to develop and evaluate novel ways to implement AD.

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​At NaRCAD, we look at this unpredictable environment and see a mandate to collaborate and innovate.

Planning for NaRCAD2017, our annual conference, is well underway, and the call for proposals is open. Submit results of your current work or your ideas for panels and breakout sessions that will let you share your work and inspire colleagues. 

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To keep AD growing and thriving requires an active pipeline of newly trained detailers, which we have just added to with our recent AD Techniques Training on March 30 & 31, 2017. 

This spring’s training class came to Boston to learn the techniques of academic detailing in order to support important interventions, including better use of smoking cessation treatment for patients with serious mental illness, increasing HPV vaccination rates, enhanced safety of opioid prescribing, and improving the care of chronic diseases such as COPD, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, heart failure, and kidney disease.

​Our trainees hailed from Canada, Brazil, and around the U.S., including South Carolina, Rhode Island, Idaho, Massachusetts, Oregon, Texas, Kentucky, Connecticut, and Colorado, bringing their unique experiences and backgrounds to 2 days filled with hands-on learning opportunities. Stay tuned for upcoming details about our Fall 2017 training, to be held this September--dates announced soon!

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What continues to motivate us during times of uncertainty is working with the NaRCAD community, and we want 2017 to continue to be a year of even deeper engagement. Submit to the 2017 conference, share your ideas, suggestions, and comments on our blog, or reach out to us directly.  We’re excited to continue to support your work and to build new collaborations--tell us what you need as part of our community of clinical outreach educators. ​-Mike

Biography. Michael Fischer, MD, MS, NaRCAD Director
Dr. Fischer is a general internist, pharmacoepidemiologist, and health services researcher. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and a clinically active primary care physician and educator at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. With extensive experience in designing and evaluating interventions to improve medication use, he has published numerous studies demonstrating potential gains from improved prescribing. Read more.