Teaching Value in Healthcare Learning Network Fellow

Costs of Care, in partnership with the ABIM Foundation, would like to welcome Dr. Arjun Gupta to the team as the inaugural Teaching Value in Healthcare Learning Network Fellow for 2017-2018. Arjun attended medical school at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and gained a strong awareness of the need for high value care while being trained abroad and comparing healthcare delivery to that provided in the United States. He completed residency in internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) in Dallas, Texas and is currently the Chief Resident for Quality, Patient Safety and High Value Care at UTSW.

A message from Arjun:

‘Having received my early medical training in a resource-limited setting, during residency I immediately noticed the ‘waste’ all around me in health-care. As a resident at the University of Texas Southwestern, I was fortunate to participate in courses such as our Clinical Safety and Effectiveness Course, American Society of Clinical Oncology Quality Training Program, and Dell Med School’s Discovering Value-Based Health Care modules. As I learned the basic principles of quality improvement and high value care, I started to see medicine through a different lens. Inspired by Choosing Wisely™, my resident colleagues and I began to address the overuse that we saw and our efforts led to multiple publications in JAMA Internal Medicine’s “Teachable Moments” series.

I hope to pursue a career in academic oncology and education, incorporating my experiences this year into my oncology training. Some of the projects we are doing at our safety net hospital include reducing unnecessary staging imaging procedures for patients with breast cancer, reducing the delay in chemotherapy administration time, and moving several multi-day chemotherapy regimens from the inpatient setting to the outpatient setting. As a chief resident, I have a unique opportunity to teach our house-staff and to collaborate with other training programs on how to best include high value care in the curriculum. Specifically, I hope to increase the impact of the Costs of Care/ABIM Foundation Teaching Value in Healthcare Learning Network among trainees- our healthcare leaders of tomorrow- and diversify its focus to encompass multiple specialties. Through this Learning Network Fellowship with Costs of Care, I look forward to entering a national network of stakeholders in the field of value, including clinicians, educators, trainees and health systems leaders, and being mentored by the best in the field with the ultimate goal to do the right thing at the right time for our patients and their families.’’