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Summary of Commission
With
a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts,
the Pew Health Professions Commission was created in 1989 to focus on
the healthcare workforce. At the time, policy development regarding health
professions' education, supply and regulation was limited despite significant
attention to the cost, availability and quality of health care in the
U.S. The mission of the Commission, a national and interdisciplinary group
of health care leaders, was to help policy makers and educators produce
health care professionals who meet the changing needs of the American
health care system. The Commission understood that health care professionals
play pivotal roles in the delivery of health care; thus any efforts to
improve health care must include the people who ultimately provide that
care.
Working within this framework, the most significant goal and achievement
of the Commission has been raising the awareness of the role of health
care professionals in the larger health care environment. The primary
strategy employed has been the publication of a series of
reports that seek to make some sense of the chaos and change in health
care generally and offer recommendations for the professions to best respond
to the trends and developments. These recommendations and analyses have
been incorporated into aspects of the health care system ranging from
health professions education curricula (to include "the Pew
competencies") to state legislative proposals (to reform health professions
regulation) to national policy agendas (to address workforce supply and
graduate medical education financing). The Commission has also used high
profile conferences and forums, an awards program for primary care providers,
a speakers' bureau that has addressed tens of thousands of people, sub-granting
programs, expert analysis and policy recommendations on specific topics
such as graduate medical education financing, press conferences and testimony.
Through the direct involvement of literally hundreds of individuals playing
roles as commissioners, task force members and
staff, the Commission has advanced a comprehensive agenda to understand
how the nature of being a health professional is changing in today's health
care vortex. This includes recognizing that the health care workplace
is demanding new professional skills and new configurations of staff;
reforming the ways in which health care professionals are regulated to
promote responsive independence and competence while protecting the public
from harm; aligning the size of the health care workforce with the needs
of the public; and ensuring that health professions education and training
efforts are consistent with the needs of the care delivery system.
In January 1999, the Pew Health Professions Commission closed after ten
years of work and many accomplishments. As the Commission ended its work,
it passed many of its initiatives on to the Center for the Health Professions
at the University of California, San Francisco. The Center will continue
to advance understanding of these issues and develop programs that assist
schools and professionals in making the necessary accommodations to this
new world.
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