This program addresses conflict through collaboration via ground work with horses.  Led by Maja Ramsey, a lawyer and mediator and Kathleen, IHC’s CEO, this program provides learners with a cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally active learning experience focused on equestrian ground skills while working in small teams (two participants teamed with a horse).

All teams are led through structured physical exercises and debriefing to communicate both verbally and through body language to:

• Improve capacity for being fully present    
• Enhance listening skills
• Set clear intention
• Identify and shift emotions
• Follow through (action)
• Remain unattached to the outcome.

The program is held over a 3-day weekend with a strong focus on opportunities for reflective practice through journaling, guided debriefings, discussion, and action commitment. 

WHY CONSIDER THIS?

This annual hands-on experience has been offered for the past five years and has been experienced by a wide variety of professionals including physicians, attorneys, judges, veterinarians, and students of life-long learning. This program provides a unique opportunity to increase your capacity to handle conflict and to practice collaborative leadership, all while working with horses.

To register by May 8th, contact Mary Lou Hanley at marylou@rockroseinstitute.org or 415-561-3232

Click here to download a flyer about the upcoming June 22-24th Steadfast.

Candid Conversations: Talking with Female Patients about Sexual Health.

With a grant from Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, IHC is offering an intensive 3.5-day train-the-trainer program to teach a highly interactive workshop to improve clinical interactions about sexual health issues with female patients.

The course will be held in Miami, Florida on March 22-25, 2012.

Tuition, and most meals covered by the independent educational grant. Reasonable travel and hotel expenses reimbursed by IHC.

Limited enrollment available. Click here for information and application due by February 3rd.

Dec 2011 Team and Patient-Centered Communication Faculty

IHC teamed up with the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) to offer a new faculty course at MGMA headquarters in Englewood, Colorado on Dec 1st and 2nd. The focus of the faculty course was IHC’s workshop, “Team and patient-centered communication” for PCMH teams.

The faculty course was led by Kathleen Bonvicini, MPH, EdD, IHC CEO and Sandy Reifsteck, RN, MSEd, FACMPE, Director of IHC’s Office of Development and Quality Outcomes. The course was attended by IHC’s CPC faculty and Master Trainers: Eric Huber BA, MA and Stephanie Wojtowicz MD, Springfield Clinic in Illinois; Tao Le MD, Healthnet of California; Michele M. Nanchoff, PhD, RPsych, IHC Master Trainer; Dan O’Connell PhD, IHC Master Trainer; Michael T. Ross MD, True Medicine Communication Consulting; Gustave Sison PhD, A Gulf Coast Health Care System; Katheryne Stewart, BSc, IHC-Canada; Lynn Webb PhD, Vanderbilt School of Medicine. Congratulations to IHC’s newly trained Team and Patient-Centered Communication Faculty!

Barbara Andrews, MPPM, MPH brings extensive experience in grant-seeking and grants management, health policy and business research, and program development and management.

Most of Barbara’s career has been in the nonprofit sector.  She has served as a consultant to nonprofit health and aging services organizations, providing advice on grant strategy development, grant-writing, grant program management and research. For more than 12 years, she was Vice President for Policy Research at the Connecticut Association of Not-for-profit Providers For the Aging (CANPFA). She helped to found and secure funding for CANPFA’s Institute for Long-term Care Policy, Inc., the organizing entity for the Connecticut Coalition to Improve End-of-life Care. She has also worked as a grant writer at Waterbury Hospital, developing continued and new funding to support HIV/AIDS, mental health, workforce development, youth engagement and other services.

Barbara earned two graduate degrees from Yale, in management and public health. She honed her research and editing skills at Nerac, a small business research consulting firm.

We are very enthusiastic about IHC’s newest initiative in promoting integrated, coordinated patient-centered care with a focus on communication skill practice applicable in patient and team interactions. IHC conducted a pilot of this highly interactive workshop last summer with the Veterans Administration nationwide via a train-the-trainer model. This pilot program brought together VA clinicians from several disciplines who will now be teaching IHC’s new communication workshop in their respective VA medical centers across the country. This project has been highly successful and led to a second faculty program held in November 2010 in New Haven – this time with primary care interdisciplinary teams working with patients with chronic pain.

Call to Action

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has developed rigorous standards for medical practices to demonstrate that they are functioning as PCMHs. “Better communication leads to better care” is at the heart of HCAHPS, global payments, and other satisfaction surveys.

Team and Patient-Centered Communication Training

Members of your healthcare team can be trained to teach this Communication Workshop to healthcare teams within your organization.

Training Goals

1. Help all members of your healthcare teams understand, embrace and develop effective communication skills required for systems that use the PCMH model.

2. Improve patient care and satisfaction

3. Increase patient adherence and self-management

4. Increase healthcare team satisfaction

5. Reduce medical error and liability risk

Registration for PCMH Communication Faculty Course

We are now recruiting new faculty to teach IHC’s Team and Patient-Centered Communication Workshop. This 3.5 day faculty course will be held in October 18-21, 2011 in New Haven, Connecticut. Tuition for the 3.5 day training is $3,500 and includes all educational materials to teach the PCMH Communication Workshop. Click here to download an application.

What Does the Faculty Course Involve?

1. IHC’s Team and Patient-Centered Train-the-Trainer Program is a highly interactive 3.5 day course using a 1:5 trainer/learner ratio. Program is focused on learning workshop content, adult learning theory, facilitation techniques and workshop practice in a small, learning group setting. In addition, trainees practice communication skills in contextually relevant patient simulations in small group settings.

2. Each trainer will be provided with all of the educational materials and resources to teach the Communication Workshop for implementation in your organization (Workshop slide decks, workbook and training videos provided).

3. Customized workshop format adaptable to meet your individual organization continuing education needs. Workshop delivery options: 4.5 hour or expanded 6 hour workshop, two 3 hour presentations, or 6 one hour modules. Can be used by your organization in the most appropriate time frame for your practice. (All materials included).

IHC CPC Faculty

We will also be conducting a shortened (1.75 day) faculty course for CPC-trained faculty who are interested in adding IHC’s Team and Patient-Centered Communication workshop to your teaching repertoire! This course will be held in Denver on Dec 1-2, 2011.

IHC Homepage

We are happy to launch our new IHC website and would like to thank those who took part in the planning, design, and execution of this long-term project. We are especially grateful to Dr. Gregory P. Garvey, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Interactive Digital Design at Quinnipiac University. Dr. Garvey worked closely with Kathleen and offered the assistance of his senior undergraduate students from his web design class.

The class traditionally chooses a non-profit organization as a focus for their class project for students to practice skills and techniques behind designing Web pages while providing service to the non-profit community. IHC was chosen as the non-profit organization for the student team’s project which meant that IHC’s new website design would be deliberated by several teams of students under the watchful and seasoned eye of Dr. Garvey.

This collaborative undertaking between IHC and Quinnipiac included student research about IHC services, meetings and visits to the class by Kathleen, critiques of design mockups, student team submission and formal presentation of their proposed IHC website designs. We are very grateful to Dr. Garvey’s senior class and special thanks and congratulations to Quinnipiac student seniors, Steven Busa and Corey Shuster, the student team whose web design was chosen.

Thanks also to Adam Gschwender for rebuilding and customizing the website to allow our internal IHC website team to control and keep our content current while responding to feedback and requests from our IHC community. Thank you also to Rita Stokes from Modern Concepts for helping us launch our website.

We do hope you enjoy the new website and please feel free to pass along your feedback!

Watch one of IHC’s Trigger videos used in our skill-based workshops (how might you respond?)

Or download the video directly to your computer.

Download IHC Calendar of Events-2011 for a quick preview of upcoming programs.

In the past year, IHC has created an office of Development and Quality Outcomes. This Office was created to promote IHC communication training in human and veterinary medicine and relationship-building with client organizations. The office is led by Sandy Reifsteck, RN, MS, FACMPE, in IHC’s human medicine initiative, and Karen Cornell, DVM, PhD, DACVS, in IHC’s veterinary medicine initiatives.

Karen Cornell, DVM, PhD, DACVS

Dr. Cornell is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Surgery and currently a member of the Board of Regents for the same organization. She is a full professor at the University of Georgia, where she has served as the Interim Hospital Director, and is currently the Assistant Department Head in the Department of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery.  She is a two time recipient of the Carl Norden-Pfizer Distinguished Teaching Award and in 2011 she was named a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor, the highest award for teaching at UGA. Karen became involved with IHC in 2003 when she was a participant in the first train-the-trainer program for veterinary faculty. She has served as a trainer for each of the annual veterinary faculty courses offered by IHC since.  Karen’s previous private practice career and current engagement teaching veterinary students, afford her a unique appreciation for the importance of communication in veterinary practice, and for the necessity of providing practical training to all veterinary professionals.

Sandra W. Reifsteck RN, MS Ed, FACMPE

Sandy has over 25 years of experience in group practice operations where she served as VP of Professional Services working with over 300 physicians, 100 midlevel providers, hospital, nursing home and home health agency. This broad experience has allowed her to serve as the Midwest Regional Consultant for IHC for the last 12 years. In addition she is a Fellow with the American College of Medical Practice Executives and served as the Chair of the Board of Directors for the national, Medical Group Management Association, Denver, CO. She received the Harry J. Harwick Outstanding Administrator Award in 1997 and the Parkland College Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2009. Her family is very important to her and her passion for making a difference in the way clinicians work with patients. She spends 6 months a year in her Midwest office in IL and 6 months in the Southwest office in AZ.   In her new IHC position, Sandy collaborates with IHC clients and develops a game plan that best suits their communication training needs and vision within their organization. Sandy’s 20 +  years working with IHC has provided her with the expertise and flexibility to create and sustain client relationships while tapping into IHC’s rich resource of talent, experience and creativity.