What’s Happening
Graduate medical education programs at Dell Med, in partnership with Ascension Seton, put residents and fellows in positions to provide care to Central Texans in addition to their specialized training. 2020 and 2021 saw trainees respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and provide hundreds of thousands hours of care to Travis County residents.
And with Dell Med’s signature curriculum — Advancing Care Transformation — physicians in training advance their skills as systems-ready leaders, taking on systemic challenges in health and leading change in an evolving health care landscape.
Delivering Care
In 2020, 346 Dell Med residents and fellows provided over 700,000 hours of care to patients in the local community at more than 75 clinics and hospitals.
This total includes over 500,000 hours of care at Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas, Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas, Ascension Seton Shoal Creek and CommUnityCare Health Centers, and over 50,000 hours of care at community-serving sites and Veterans Affairs outpatient clinics.
Dell Med added 21 new residency and fellowship programs in 2021, for a total of 44 programs. Among the new arrivals are maternal-fetal medicine, hematology and medical oncology, and cardiovascular disease.
By 2027, the number of residents and fellows at Dell Med is projected to increase to 462.
Developing Systems-Ready Leaders
Unique to graduate medical education at Dell Med is its signature curriculum: Advancing Care Transformation, or ACT.
All residents at Dell Med complete ACT’s Foundations in Care Transformation training, which emphasizes value-based health care, quality improvement, equity, leadership, teamwork and other key competencies in health systems science. ACT’s foundational training, available to fellows at Dell Med as well, prepares physicians for all of health care — not just a diagnosis in a clinic — which is critical to health care transformation, a concept at the heart of Dell Med.
Responding to the Pandemic
During the COVID-19 pandemic, teams at Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas and Dell Med faculty and residents collaborated to create a nationally recognized COVID-19 Center of Excellence at Dell Seton. The result: Hospital mortality rates were 33% lower than the national average for COVID-19 patients with social and medical complexities.
By March 2021, at least 75 more people had survived than would have been expected based on national averages.
Mortality rates for patients hospitalized at Dell Seton with severe COVID-19 were 4% lower than the national average (8% vs. 12%).
The hospital also had a lower COVID 30-day readmission rate of 4% for COVID-19 patients, compared to published data showing 15% readmission rates elsewhere.