Southeast Texas Medical Associates, LLP James L. Holly, M.D. Southeast Texas Medical Associates, LLP


Letters - American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation and SETMA
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July 26, 2012

Executive Director
American Board of Internal Medicine
510 Walnut Street
Suite 1700
Philadelphia, PA 19106-3699

Dear Sir:

Five of Southeast Texas Medical Associates’ physicians are diplomats of the ABIM.  June 22, 2004, the ABIM Foundation conducted a site visit to Southeast Texas Medical Associates, LLP (www.jameslhollymd.com) in the Foundation’s first major initiative promoting quality, entitled “Putting Quality Into Practice.”  For this project, they chose 40 exemplary practices around the country and 40 practices which have no quality initiatives.  After a three-hour interview and presentation, I asked the Foundation representative, "In that we are the last of the 40 practices you identified, where is SETMA in relationship to the other practices you have visited?"  He said, "I have personally conducted 25 of the 40 site visits.  NCQA did the other 15.  You are further along in developing quality measures than any of the practices I visited.  No one else has begun to gain the advantages from EMR that you have.  This is really impressive." (emphasis added)

As SETMA concludes our 17th year next Tuesday and as I am preparing a brief summary of our history, I wanted to bring the Foundation up to date on what SETMA has done since you last visited us.  SETMA’s expansion of electronic patient management has been extensive. All of our tools can be viewed at www.jameslhollymd.com under Electronic Patient Management Tools.  We publicly report by provider name on over 250 quality metrics.  Our published results for 2009, 2010, 2011, and the first six months of 2012 can be seen on our website under Public Reporting.  For the past 14 years, SETMA has published a weekly health article (2,000 words) and all of those are posted under Your Life Your Health.

SETMA is an NCQA Tier III Patient-Centered Medical Home and is accredited by AAAHC as a Medical Home. We are an affiliate of Diabetes Center of Excellence affiliated with Harvard and have Diabetes recognition from NCQA.  The following two link detail SETMA’s Model of Care and our response on Primary Care to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation request:

SETMA’s Model of Care Patient-Centered Medical Home: The Future of Healthcare Innovation and Change

The Primary Care Team: Learning from Effective Ambulatory Practices (PCT-LEAP): Performance Measures Worksheet - Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

In this latter document the index is a set of hyperlinks which guide you through the report.

There is more to tell but this brings you partially up to date. We have been busy over the past eight years in expanding our capability of incorporating quality into our practice.

James L Holly, M.D.
CEO, SETMA, LLP
www.jameslhollymd.com

Adjunct Professor
Family and Community Medicine
School of Medicine
UT Health Science Center
San Antonio

Clinical Associate Professor
Department of Internal Medicine
Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine

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