The Primary Care Professional Development Program (PDP) is designed to offer doctors at Atrius Health the opportunity to enrich their clinical work through participatory and leadership roles in systems level improvement projects. In their role on the frontline of the care delivery system, primary care doctors gain insights into how systems and individuals interact to affect the health of a population and individual patients. The PDP offers the time and support to develop evidence-informed skills and knowledge to fully leverage the experience of caring for patients and to apply science to tackle the various challenges and contexts of our complex healthcare system, including supporting our goal of increasing equity in care. The PDP aspires to improve recruitment, retention and leadership development and is sponsored by the Department of Quality & Performance Excellence and the Primary Care Service Line. The PDP is a two-year experiential learning opportunity for primary care physicians seeking to participate in improvement projects. Participants are practicing physicians with six clinical sessions and two administrative sessions in which they engage in hands-on learning aimed at advancing key organizational initiatives. The program adds scientific rigor and training to physician-led projects through implementation science training and leadership activities. Resource support is provided to generate peer-reviewed manuscripts and conference submissions related to PDP projects. This program is available to 3-4 primary care physicians each calendar year.

Program Elements:

• Structured and elective training in Implementation Science and QI methods
• Participation in Atrius Health leadership meetings
• Navigating a Value-based Care Organization lecture series
• PDP Journal club
• PDP Physician-led Improvement projects
• Health equity project evaluation
• Manuscript preparation
• Project presentations to leadership