On April 15, a USF Health interprofessional team of students, comprised of two USF College of Public Health (COPH) and two Taneja College of Pharmacy students, placed second in the national CLARION Case Competition.

The CLARION Case Competition, originally founded by health professional students at the University of Minnesota, is an annual competition that brings together interdisciplinary teams of health profession students from around the country, including students from nursing, medicine, pharmacy and health administration.

The aim of the competition is to give students hands-on experience working in a collaborative environment to better health care and patient outcomes.

Each team is given a hypothetical case scenario and, with the help of a faculty advisor, works together to devise ways to improve patient health care.

The USF Health team consisted of COPH MHA students Stephanie Hersman and John Whelan as well as pharmacy students Gerardo Gutierrez and Nathalie Rodriguez. The students, whose faculty advisor was Dr. Rebecca Ditwiler from the School of Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Sciences, were sent to the national competition at the University of Minnesota after winning the first-ever local competition held among USF Health students.

“The competition was a great opportunity for interprofessional collaboration and to put into practice what I have learned thus far in my career and master’s program,” Hersman commented. “It was an opportunity to challenge myself and to learn more about certain health care topics I didn’t know much about. I learned that in order to propose a new idea, it takes a lot of research. Also, working as an interdisciplinary team brings in new ideas and different perspectives that can build upon each other.”

All teams were given the same case scenario—rethinking shared visits to transform healthcare.

The students shared their ideas on how to enhance the shared visit model at Community-University Health Care Center in Minnesota. Their idea focused largely on incorporating artificial intelligence into the check-in, transcription and check-out processes and staggering patient visits with multiple providers to maximize time, efficiency and spending, all while improving the patient experience. 

According to Whelan, each student brought their individual experience and knowledge to the case.

“Our approach was to divide up the challenge into subject expertise,” Whelan explained. “Stephanie came with a strong understanding of public health as well as medical assistant work experience, so she handled our analysis of community needs and patient experience. Gerardo is especially creative and technology oriented, so he created our idea to incorporate artificial intelligence into the patient experience. Nathalie’s experience as a pharmacist at BRIDGE Clinic gave her insight into the roles of different providers and how they could match the needs of patients. And I used my background in healthcare administration and management to research our program design, cost of implementation, financing strategies and how to create economic returns by improving primary care.”

In an effort to promote inclusivity and address cultural differences during those visits, the students proposed the idea of using personalized avatars as a tool for patients.

“Each personalized avatar represents the culture and language of each patient,” Hersman said. “When a patient is given a tablet, their avatar will explain exactly what they can expect at their shared visit. Then, after the visit, the patient has access to their avatar at any time through the patient’s portal MyChart where the avatar can verbally communicate their after-visit summary in a manner that meets the health literacy level of the patient. The hope of incorporating personalized avatars into healthcare clinics is to promote health literacy, patient education and patient engagement across all cultural backgrounds.”

The team also developed a new way to score social determinants of health, which they labeled the ATLLASD Score System. ATTLLASD stands for age, transportation, lifestyle, language, alcohol intake, smoking and diet—all things that, Hersman said, can impact risk of disease and undiagnosed conditions. If a patient falls into a certain category (for example, if they’re older than 65 or smoke more than one cigarette a day) they are assigned a certain score.

The team’s work earned them not only second place, for which they received a $5,000 scholarship, but also the Most Innovative Award. The COPH’s Whelan also won “Best Presenter.”

“I am always proud to represent USF,” Whelan said, “and I’m immensely grateful that USF Health covered our travel expenses and arranged the local competition. I would recommend CLARION in a heartbeat as a great way to meet new friends across disciplines. I was also able to tie my coursework into the case, which helped me engage with the materials that I was learning in class. And all of my professors gave great input as we were studying the case.”

This was the sixth year USF Health has participated in the competition and the first time they have placed in the top three.

“I felt humbled and beyond excited to represent USF Health,” Hersman said. “It’s an honor to represent a university that has provided so much to me, through education, support, motivation, personal growth, connection and career guidance. The encouragement from faculty and staff, as well as the support from my team, made all the hard work well worth it.”

To view the students’ presentation, click here.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health