Project ECHO is a lifelong learning and guided practice model that revolutionizes medical education and exponentially increases workforce capacity to provide best-practice specialty care and reduce health disparities. The heart of the ECHO model™ is its hub-and-spoke knowledge-sharing networks, led by expert teams who use multi-point videoconferencing to conduct virtual clinics with community providers. In this way, primary care doctors, nurses, and other clinicians learn to provide excellent specialty care to patients in their own communities using an all-teach all-learn model.
Project ECHO links expert specialist teams at a “hub” with primary care clinicians and other professionals in local communities. Primary care clinicians, the “spokes” in the ECHO model, become part of a learning community, where they receive mentoring and feedback from specialists. Together, they manage patient cases so that patients get the care they need. Although the ECHO model makes use of telecommunications technology, it is different from telemedicine.
The demand for professional training and technical assistance for practice transformation focused on advance care planning, MOLST and eMOLST has grown exponentially. To meet the growing need as well as provide for sustainable advance care planning and MOLST/eMOLST training, several options have been explored.
Project ECHO’s innovative approach will support the current and future needs of our clinicians and system leaders. ECHO MOLST will provide long term, sustainable MOLST education that will improve the competency and capacity of clinicians and improve adherence to patient preferences at end-of-life. Excellus BlueCross BlueShield is a partner with Project ECHO.
Our core team at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Katie Orem, Meg Greco and Dr. Pat Bomba, traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico and attended a 3-day ECHO Immersion Training in October 2017 as an important first step in launching ECHO MOLST: Honoring Patient Preferences at End-of-Life.
ECHO MOLST: Honoring Patient Preferences at End-of-Life will begin on Thursday, September 13th and will take place every Thursday from 12:00PM to 1:00PM through mid-November.
ECHO MOLST is open to physicians and nurse practitioners accountable for MOLST and all others who participate in the discussion.
Participants will connect through the Zoom video conferencing platform. For more information, contact Meg.Greco@Excellus.com.
Submit your email address to receive New York's MOLST Update.
The MOLST Update is a Newsletter dedicated to providing up-to-date information on advance care planning, MOLST and eMOLST.