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Seattle Children's participates in the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) Multi-Specialty MOC Portfolio Approval Program (Portfolio Program). The Portfolio Program offers a single process for healthcare organizations to support medical staff involvement in quality-improvement and Maintenance of Certification (MOC) across multiple ABMS specialties.
This pathway offers a streamlined approach for organizations, such as Seattle Children's, that sponsor and support multiple well-designed quality-improvement efforts involving medical staff across multiple disciplines to work with participating ABMS member boards to grant Part 4 MOC credit to physicians (and Category 1 PI-CME credit to physician assistants) who are involved in those improvement efforts. (View a list of ABMS member boards involved in the ABMS Portfolio Program.)
Step 1: Bring your ideas to us. We will help move your idea into a project that will meet ABMS standards.
Step 2: Prepare and application and present to our community. Our staff will provide coaching as needed.
Step 3: Run your project as planned, incorporating any changes suggested by our committee. Our staff will provide coaching as needed.
Step 4: Renew your project annually for continued PDCA cycles.
Projects must:
MOC project leaders must be able to lead and teach quality improvement by doing one or more of the following:
MOC project leader duties include:
Would you like to lead a MOC-approved project at Seattle Children's Hospital? Please contact the MOC team for more information and next steps.
Step 1: Select a project and sign up using our online system.
Step 2: Attend required project meetings. Complete project interventions.
Step 3: Complete a final attestation form.
Step 4: We will submit your participation directly to your board. Credit will be issued in 4 to 6 weeks.
To receive Part 4 MOC credit (e.g., 25 American Board of Pediatrics points)/Category 1 PI-CME credit from Seattle Children's MOC Program, all physicians/physician assistants must complete the following:
We are excited to offer many opportunities for physicians to learn how to continuously improve the delivery of care to their patients. See the list of approved projects.
We are excited to offer opportunities for physicians and physician assistants to learn how to continuously improve the delivery of care to their patients. The following is a list of projects currently approved for ABMS Part 4 MOC credit for physicians (and Category 1 Performance Improvement [PI] CME credit for physician assistants certified with the National Committee on Certification of Physician Assistants [NCCPA]).
Unless otherwise stated, these projects are only available to physicians or physician assistants with a relationship with Seattle Children’s or its affiliates. To know if a project is currently open for enrollment, or if you are interested to participate in a project, please contact MOC.
2022 Best Project (Project ECHO Series I)
Gender diverse patients face significant barriers to receiving adequate healthcare, including having negative experiences in the healthcare setting. In a survey of gender diverse adults, 33% of those who saw a healthcare provider in the past year reported having at least one negative experience related to being transgender, with higher rates for people of color and people with disabilities. 23% of respondents did not see a doctor when they needed to because of fear of being mistreated as a transgender person. The aim of this project is to increase participant knowledge and self-efficacy regarding best-practice care for gender diverse youth in order to improve the healthcare experiences of gender diverse youth and improve access to gender-affirming care.
Participants will attend at least three workshops – each workshop will include a brief didactic with knowledge assessment, case-based learning with peer feedback, review of self-assessment survey data, and identify and mitigate barriers. They will learn to discuss and respect a patient's gender, to document names and pronouns correctly, and to recognize the attitudes and behaviors they could change.
Recruiting and retaining clinical research participants who reflect the diversity of the populations affected by the conditions or experiences being studied is essential to produce generalizable results that can meaningfully translate into clinical care and avoid exacerbating health disparities. However, patients and families from marginalized and minoritized backgrounds continue to be underrepresented in research at the Seattle Children's Research Institute (SCRI). This problem is multifaceted, with potential avenues for intervention across the research process. This project aims to empower clinician investigators to take practical steps toward enhancing diversity among participants in their research projects.
Project participants will attend sessions with didactic presentations and case-based group discussions, supplemented by self-directed reading and review of course materials. They will complete attitudinal surveys at baseline and after course completion, as well as weekly self-assessments of inclusive research behaviors.
Please refer to the project flyer for details.
2022 MOC Project with the Greatest Impact
GATHER is an expansion of our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion MOC project with the aim of improving faculty engagement in equity, diversity and inclusion using quality improvement, self-reflection, and peer discussion. Sessions run quarterly starting in October 2021, and are open to all physicians and physician assistants providing care for children at UW and Children’s locations.
Inefficient and unnecessary time in the local EMR can contribute to provider frustration and burnout. This project aims to provide job satisfaction by increasing clinician confidence and self-perception of efficiency in using Epic (EMR). Participants will attend small group teaching (i.e., workshop series) on identified high yield topics, enhance their skills at EMR features such as chart review, documentation and order entry, etc.
2020 MOC Project with the Greatest Impact
2016 Best Project
The overall goal of this project is to improve influenza screening rates in ambulatory settings at Seattle Children's through creating standard work. Specifically, this project aims to:
Participation in this project is limited to physicians who work at Seattle Children's.
Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) requires complex care for inflammatory arthritis. Symptoms may come and go, and flares, which are characterized by inflammation and worsening of symptoms of pain, stiffness, and fatigue. JIA has no cure and the goal of care is to achieve a state of inactive disease or very low disease activity. Undertreated disease can result in permanent disability and chronic pain. Currently, there are variations in how JIA is treated and in outcomes achieved by different treating centers. This project aims to improve the processes of care and outcomes for JIA children and youth, reduce unwarranted variation, so that more patients are able to achieve low or inactive disease and reach their life goals with improved quality of life.
High-quality communication improves patient outcomes, including adherence, trust and satisfaction. Most clinicians have received limited training in complex communication tasks, including discussing serious news, navigating conflict or eliciting goals of care. It is often assumed that either 1) clinicians' bedside manner is an immutable characteristic, i.e., they are either naturally "good" or "bad" at communication, or 2) more clinical experience with challenging conversations automatically leads to an improvement in communication. Yet, data suggests that communication is a skill, just like any other in medicine, that can be improved with education and deliberate practice. When "good communication" is broken down and labeled as discrete communication skills, clinicians can identify both their current strengths and areas they would like to improve in.
This project aims to improve serious illness communication with patients and families at Seattle Children's Hospital. Specifically, at the end of the project, ≥80% of participant responses are "always" or "often" on self-assessment of 1) reflection and debrief of communication and 2) communication skill utilization.
Addressing gaps in social determinants of health (SDoH) needs has demonstrated a major impact on overall health, well-being, and quality of life. Recent studies have found that overall, 12% of families seeking pediatric health care report a general social need with this number increasing to over 50% in the Medicaid population. Seattle Children’s Care Network (SCCN) patients may have gaps in care due to unmet/unidentified SDoH needs, particularly those patients with Medicaid insurance. Most SCCN practices have not yet established proactive, standardized screening for SDoH needs at well-child visits. Additionally, practices have not yet established standardized documentation of follow-up for identified SDoH needs.
The project aims to increase the SDoH screening data capture rate from current baseline of 7% to a target of 15% for all SCCN patients ages 0-18 years who have completed well-child visits by June 2025. Project participants will select and implement use of standard SDoH screening tool, implement standard use of EMR-specific alerts or reminders relative to SDoH screening, and clinic workflows inclusive of SDoH screening, documentation and closed-loop follow ups with patients and families, etc.
2019 Best Project
2017 Best Project
Due to shifts in burden of patient coverage and expectations for 24-hour access, faculty physicians have disrupted sleep habits. This can lead to fatigue, insomnia, and other significant adverse physician and mental health consequences (shift work disorder). Suboptimal physician wellness subsequently can negatively affect patient care and patient safety. It can also lead to poor physician career satisfaction and poor physician retention (loss of physicians to other careers with more traditional work schedules or early retirement). This project aims to educate physicians about sleep disturbances due to atypical shift work and ways to mitigate these deleterious effects ultimately leading to better sleep habits, improved physician health, improved patient care and better physician retention. Participants will attend workshops, implement strategies, complete surveys and diaries, and review data at team meetings.
Childhood and adolescent vaccination rates remain suboptimal, and vaccine administrations have decreased during the pandemic. Reasons for this are multifactorial, including factors at the level of the patient and family, provider, primary care practice, and community. The aim of this project is to improve child and adolescent vaccination coverage in Washington state. Over a 6-month period, participating clinics will do this by identifying missed vaccination opportunities, implementing improvements, receiving regular data and coaching, and will benefit from participating in a community of clinics working toward the same goals.
Seattle Children’s MOC Program is collaborating with the Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (WCAAP) to spread the learning of GATHER to the statewide community. The learning collaborative will begin in April 2023 and sessions are open to all open to all Washington state pediatric healthcare providers, including pediatricians, family physicians and advanced practice providers. Please visit the WCAAP webpage for details.
General inquiries: (email)
Program Director: Joel S. Tieder, MD, MPH (email)
Program Manager: Cheery Yip (email)
Program Coordinator: Grace Franada (email)