Journal Article

Measuring the academic value of academic medical centers: describing a methodology for developing an evaluation model at one Academic Medical Center

Zimlichman, Eyal, Maimon, Oded, Hod, Rafael

2019

Overview

Background Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) must simultaneously serve different purposes: Delivery of high quality healthcare services to patients, as the main mission, supported by other core missions such as academic activities, i.e., researching, teaching and tutoring, while maintaining solvency. This study aims to develop a methodology for constructing models evaluating the academic value provided by AMCs and implementing it at the largest AMC in Israel. Methods Thirty five practiced educators and researchers, academic experts, faculty members and executives, all employed by a metropolitan 1500-bed AMC, were involved in developing academic quality indicators. First, an initial list of AMCs’ academic quality indicators was drafted, using a literature review and consulting scholars. Afterwards, additional data and preferences were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews, complemented by a three-round Delphi Panel. Finally, the methodology for constructing a model evaluating the academic value provided by the AMC was developed. Results The composite academic quality indicators methodology consists of nine indicators (relative weight in parentheses): ‘Scientific Publications Value ’ (18.7%), ‘Completed Studies ’ (13.5%), ‘Authors Value ’ (13.0%), ‘Residents Quality ’ (11.3%), ‘Competitive Grants Budget ’ (10.2%), ‘Academic Training’ (8.7%), ‘Academic Positions’ (8.3%), ‘Number of Studies’ (8.3%) and ‘Academic Supervision’ (8.0%). These indicators were grouped into three core categories: ‘Education ’, ‘Research’ and ‘ Publications ’, having almost the same importance on a scale from zero to one (0–1), i.e., 0.363, 0.320, and 0.317, respectively. The results demonstrated a high level of internal consistency (Cronbach-alpha range: 0.79–0.86). Conclusions We have found a gap in the ability to measure academic value provided by AMCs. The main contribution of this research is the development of methodology for constructing evaluation models for AMCs academic performance. Further studies are needed to further test the validity and reliability of the proposed methodology at other sites.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,BMC
• Subject: Academic achievement / Academic Medical Center (AMC) / Academic Medical Centers - standards / Academic Medical Centers - statistics & numerical data / Academic Medical Centers - trends / Academic quality indicators (AQI) / Academic value / Analysis / Biomedical Research / Budgets / Delphi panel / Delphi Technique / Education / Education, Medical / Evaluation Studies as Topic / Health Administration / Health care industry / Health Policy / Health Promotion and Disease Prevention / Health Services Research / Hospitals / Humans / Interviews as Topic / Israel / Male / Medical centers / Medical education / Medical personnel training / Medical schools / Medicine / Medicine & Public Health / Middle Aged / Original / Original Research Article / Public Health / Quality control / Quality of care in Israel and beyond / Quality of Health Care / Reproducibility of Results / Services / Surveys and Questionnaires / Teachers / Tutoring