Stepping Up to
  the Plate (SUTTP)

While there certainly are examples of effective physician leaders at the forefront of efforts to bridge the nation's quality chasm, considerable work remains to be done to involve physicians both as leaders and as team members in efforts to improve quality of care. Given the central role of the physician in decisions about health care, more effective engagement of physicians—at all levels-seems essential. How can we get doctors to "Step Up To The Plate" (SUTTP) to transform clinical practice in order to achieve the six aims of the Institute of Medicine (IOM)—safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable.

To address this, the ABIM Foundation has organized an informal alliance called, simply, "The Stepping Up to the Plate Alliance."

In the first phase of work, the ABIM Foundation convened a broad range of stakeholders to develop strategies to engage all physicians and clinicians to take leadership and maintain active participation in quality improvement throughout their practice lifetimes. Three main strategies emerged from Phase I:

1. Seek to change the culture by engaging the hearts and minds of individual physicians
2. Facilitate physician leaders/organizations participating alongside other stakeholders advancing quality initiatives
3. Make possible dissemination of tools and technologies for use by physicians to enhance quality of care

This established the platform for Phase II of the SUTTP Alliance. In March 2006, the ABIM Foundation convened leaders from a number of medical societies to begin to organize a "learning community" and to identify areas of collaboration. Our plan is to work with specialty societies as well as boards, health plans, purchasers, measurement organizations and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) on specific topics (e.g., coordination of care—hand-offs) to evolve this collaborative learning community.