The UNC Weight Management Team has been awarded a UNC Medical Center Quality and Safety Team Award for their project, “Improving Obesity Treatments in Primary Care.”
The project was designed to reduce the financial and geographic barriers to obesity treatments across UNC primary care clinics. The weight management team embedded three obesity trained primary care physicians in three primary care offices located in Hillsborough, Chatham and Apex, NC. The financial burden of obesity treatment was minimized by removing specialty copay rates and hospital fees. Ultimately, this patient-centered obesity care model was effective in achieving weight loss goals in over 1,500 patients all across central NC. This program is now expanding into the eastern rural communities of the state.
The multidisciplinary team included: Sarah Ro, MD, Shannon Aymes, MD, Jennifer McCauley, MD, Teneisha Davis, MD, Angelica Lackey, MPH, MS1, Grace Tate, BS, Jill Schaeffer, MD, Sriram Machineni, MD, Shana Ratner, MD, and Lynne Fiscus, MD, MPH.
The award will be presented at the Medical Center Improvement Council (MCIC) meeting on Tuesday, June 13. Learn more about the UNC Weight Management Program here.