Dr. Sandra Morgan and Dave Stachowiak talk to Dr. Ron Chambers about the importance of teaching physicians proper patient care systems for trafficking victims in order to build better medical homes.

Key Points

“The physician education, training, and development of a human trafficking victim medical home developed at the Dignity Health Family Medicine Residency Program has been conceptualized and implemented with incredible success.  We hope to spread the concept to residencies clinics throughout the country and standardize human trafficking victim and survivor care in physician education and training across the country. It is a viable solution with the potential to synergistically provide widespread healthcare that coincides with training the physicians of tomorrow to recognize and treat this vulnerable patient population.”

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Transcript

Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 159, What is a Medical Home? An interview with Dr. Ron Chambers.

Production Credits: [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave: [00:00:34] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie: [00:00:39] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave: [00:00:41] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, each episode we work to bring something that’s most relevant to our listening community or to bring a guest that will really help us to expand our knowledge. And today is no different. I’m excited

Sandie: [00:01:05] I am too, Dr. Ron Chambers is a program director DIO at Family Medicine Residency Program Chair and his work at Mercy Family Health Center and Mercy Human Trafficking Clinic is to me just very cutting edge and it’s emerging best practice. So, we want to welcome Dr. Chambers to Ending Human Trafficking.

Ron: [00:01:30] Well, thank you for having me.

Sandie: [00:01:32] OK so one of the quotes that I have from you that was kind of a catalyst that made me want to go and see what you were doing, so I actually went and visited Dr. Chambers in Sacramento when I was up there for the California Sociological Association conference. And he said, “the physician education, training, and development of a human trafficking victim medical home developed at the Dignity Health Family Medicine Residency program has been conceptualized and implemented with incredible success. We hope to spread the concept to residencies clinics throughout the country and standardize human trafficking victim and survivor care in physician education and training across the country. It is a viable solution with the potential to synergistically provide widespread health care that coincides with training the physicians of tomorrow to recognize and treat this vulnerable patient population.” And so, can you expand on that? That inspired me so much.

Ron: [00:02:47] Oh well thank you, Sandra. I do think the idea is a viable construct for providing care to this patient population. I became involved with work with human trafficking victims and survivors a few years back after Dignity Health the hospital system I worked for launched an initiative to take on the issue of human trafficking. And they have spent millions of dollars and we’ve spent thousands of hours training the workforce throughout the 43 hospitals in our system and creating a system-wide effort where the hospitals and the personnel working within the hospitals have been trained on human trafficking and to have an approach to patient care that is victim-centered and trauma-informed and survivor lead with Holly Gibbs being the program director for the system. I feel very fortunate that we were involved early on in that initiative and helped write the protocols and be a part of the work that was being done. But what was interesting pretty early on is we recognized that when we were identifying patients when we are identifying victims within the hospital setting we were dealing with people that of course had in days, weeks, months, years, even decades of trauma and abuse. And the protocols themselves were very effective at enabling us to help these patients get removed from trafficking situations and connected with the resources, and law enforcement, and safe houses, and case management services. But there really was an ongoing need for longitudinal medical care. And so that’s what we really focused on addressing at least at Mercy Family Health Center And within our residency program was creating a system within the clinic that could meet the needs of this patient population not just in the first 24 hours or first week but over the course of years and their lifetimes. It really has made enormous success for perspective over the last eight to 10 months since the beginning of the new year January 1st. We’ve seen approximately 110 new trafficking victims within our center.

Sandie: [00:05:07] Wow.

Ron: [00:05:07] And I think our average number is average across the board on there is about four to five clinic visits per patient. So that’s four to five hundred office visits within our center. And I really believe that putting this within the residency education makes sense.

Sandie: [00:05:28] When I read that quote the first time I was reading something online, I had just learned about what you were doing. And I come from a medical background although I haven’t been active in acute care, our listeners know I’m a nurse. But I was really excited about the idea of a medical home and it was really embarrassing when I arrived to visit you and realized that I didn’t even understand what a medical home was. And the more I thought about it, after learning so much from you in just that hour that I spent there, the concept of a home of always knowing you can go back there. That’s part of the success with developing relationships with victims and survivors because they can always come back. That you’re now using technical terminology longitudinal care or services and expa...