Dr. Schaeffer on Northwestern Medicine’s Urology Leadership and Committee Structure

In this video, Edward M. Schaeffer, MD, PhD, provides an overview of Northwestern Medicine's Expanded Urology Leadership and Committee Structure. Schaeffer is chair and Harold Binstein Professor of Urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois.

Transcription:

Please provide an overview of Northwestern Medicine's Expanded Urology Leadership and Committee Structure.

Health care has undergone a significant transformation in the last 5 to 7 years with consolidation of marketplaces, major academic centers acquiring additional hospitals, and community hospitals merging together to consolidate their business units. Ten or 12 years ago, Northwestern Medicine began to develop strategic partnerships with hospitals throughout Chicagoland. Starting in 2015, when I came to Northwestern as the chair of the department of urology, I actively engaged in the process of building a team. We are an 11-hospital system in the Chicagoland area that services around 10 and a half million people. And so we have been, over the course of the last 5 years, very intentionally been developing a team of urologists, part of our health network, that can provide high-quality urology care for our community in areas that are very close to their homes. We have deployed 18 urologists throughout our health network. These urologists work at 8 different sites. The radius from the main academic center outward is as far as 60 miles away, so again, a very broad reach, a highly integrated group. Each of the different regions, we break them apart or think about them as geographic regions. So we have basically 4 geographic regions in our health network, and these 4 geographic regions have a portfolio of very well trained, oftentimes fellowship-trained urologists at these sites. We have a portfolio of physicians who work with administrative leads to really provide care on site and understanding on site of the needs. Our vice chair for clinical integration deploys standards that are for quality, for access, for delivery of high-acuity care, in a fashion that is consistent across our health network. And then we have other components within our structure, including education, so not only education for our trainees at the central region at our academic medical center, but continuing medical education for all our providers. We actually operate a variety of different YouTube-based, Teams-based channels of discussion that are weekly or monthly that enable people to learn about their disease space, get appropriate CME credit for it, and also provide better care for their patients. And then we have a consolidated marketing structure, and so with consolidation of access and quality and continuing medical education and marketing, we have a nice organizational framework for us to really provide effective care that really feels the same throughout the different regions.

This transcription was edited for clarity.