HJAR Mar/Apr 2020

32 MAR / APR 2020  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS   Healthcare Briefs with the annual costs of participating in SHARE. “Making sure doctors and hospitals in all areas of the state have the information they need to treat their patients is critical to overall quality. And we believe that all stakeholders have a role to play in making the healthcare delivery system more effective and sustainable for the people we serve,” said Curtis Barnett, president and CEO of Arkansas Blue Cross. “We also know that we pro- duce better results when we work collaboratively. To that end, Arkansas Blue Cross is embracing current and emerging technologies as a key strat- egy to use information more effectively to create a healthier Arkansas. We are confident this grant will bring us a step closer to that goal.” The partnership has been successful in obtain- ing grants and donations to support their mem- ber hospitals and clinics with quality improve- ment initiatives and care coordination. It also has plans for population health projects in 2020 and for assisting its members with digital health tech- nology to expand these opportunities. NYITCOMPartners with Emerson Ambulance Service For EmergencyMedicine Experience Third-year medical students at New York Insti- tute of Technology College of Osteopathic Med- icine at Arkansas State University will ride with Emerson Ambulance Service as part of the stu- dent doctors’ emergency medicine rotation thanks to an agreement the institute reached with the Jonesboro-based ambulance company earlier this month. “We’re thrilled to partner with Emerson to give our student doctors a unique experience dur- ing their emergency medicine rotation,” said Amanda Deel, DO, NYITCOM associate dean of academic affairs. “This inter-professional train- ing will expand the students’ understanding of the realities that patients and emergency medical staff experience before the patient actually arrives in the emergency room. Our medical students will get to see and experience how paramedics and EMTs care for patients from the moment they contact them.” During their four-week emergency medicine rotation, NYITCOM students will spend two days on an Emerson ambulance working with their crews and learning more about the types of situations first responders encounter. “There are a lot of dynamics involved in treat- ing a patient outside of a controlled environment, and it’s extremely valuable to us when physicians understand many of the challenges paramedics and EMTs face,” Emerson Ambulance President Toby Emerson said. “It’s really helpful when a doc- tor understands what was really going on when we reached a patient. We hope this experience helps these future physicians learn more about that process and that it helps build trust between them and paramedics and EMTs throughout their career.” In medical school, student doctors spend their first two years in classroom and laboratory set- tings. In their third year, they begin performing clinical rotations - or clerkships - where they see patients alongside a licensed physician to receive hands-on training in a hospital or clinic. Their third-year rotations expose them to each of the general specialties. They spend four weeks work- ing in obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, psychi- atry, family medicine, and emergency medicine, while their general surgery and internal medicine rotations last eight weeks. NYITCOM at A-State has partnered with more than 150 hospitals, clinics, and physicians in Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, and Mississippi to train student doctors during their third and fourth years, and the college is now adding Emerson to that group. “This experience is going to be incredibly valu- able to our student doctors,” said Ben Woodruff, NYITCOM’s director of clinical education. “We’re so grateful to Emerson and their staff for provid- ing this opportunity to our medical students.” n Logan Best (center), a third-year medical student at NYITCOM at A-State, rode with Buster Swanner and Kenny Kelley of Emerson Ambulance Service Monday as part of a new partnership between NYITCOM and Emerson. Through the agreement, NYITCOM students spend two days of their four-week emergency medicine rotation with an Emerson Ambulance crew.