January 14, 2004

Dear Colleagues:

We are delighted to bring you more good news concerning the ACGME. That organization has notified us that the expedited, institution-wide site visit scheduled for February 3 has been postponed. It probably will take place in May or June instead.

As you may know, before our problems with the ACGME surfaced, our normal, triennial, institution-wide review had been set for April. Just as changing the date to February reflected the ACGME's concerns about our adherence to its rules, so, too, the change to late spring reflects its growing confidence in our program. For that we are grateful to the extraordinary work of so many people.

The past year brought about a very intensive examination of all aspects of graduate medical education (GME) under the auspices of
the graduate medical education committee chaired by Dr. Levi Watkins.

Scores of residents, faculty, and administrators from the 75 individual programs which train our 800 residents and fellows led the way not only in insuring compliance with ACGME standards, but reaching beyond that toward educational excellence for all trainees. Among accomplishments:

• Reviewing every single training program to guarantee educational excellence and attention to resident needs;
• Accelerating the plan to convert JHH to a filmless digital radiology environment, thus saving residents time and energy in retrieving x-rays;
• Allocating additional resources to the phlebotomy and patient transport teams to improve resident worklife;
• Demonstrating to external auditors that all JHM training programs are in
  substantial compliance with duty hours rules;
• Supporting school-wide curriculum development and facilities to
  teach competencies, so that residents in every program will have the
  opportunity for exposure to the best training resources in communication
  skills, error reduction, ethics, bioinformatics, study design, etc.

We know we can count on you to continue this progress, so that we come through the institution-wide review with recognition of the superb quality of our Graduate Medical Education programs.

Sincerely,