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Chairs of academic psychiatry, cyberspace is calling you.
This URL address will deliver you to the first-ever online "benchmarking" survey of academic departments of psychiatry.
The survey was designed by Naakesh A. Dewan, M.D., of the department of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, and Allen S. Daniels, Ed.D., of the department of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati. The goal is to assess the readiness of academic departments to navigate the new health care environment and to develop a bank of information about what are the "best practices" currently in use by departments of psychiatry.
The 25-question survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete and will include an e-mail tag so that results of the survey can be returned to all respondents.
Questions assess organizational structures, quality and performance improvement initiatives, and information systems. Here is a sampling: Does your department own and operate its own HMO or health plan? Does your department have a defined strategy for responding to managed care? Do you have a multidisciplinary integrated group practice that operates in your department? Does your department have a designated curriculum for residents in the area of managed care?
"The delivery of health care in the United States has changed dramatically over the last several years," Dewan and Daniels note in a "statement of intent" that greets the Web surfer on the survey homepage. "By conducting this survey, we hope to be able to share the impact of health care reforms on academic psychiatry."
Allan Tasman, M.D., chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and an APA vice president, has tested the survey and recommended that all department chairs visit the site and complete the instrument.
"The survey assesses the state of readiness of academic departments, while also establishing a bank of information that can be shared about which departments are doing what," Tasman said. (Psychiatric News, February 7, 1997)