In 2015, the presidents of Texas A&M University Health Science Center, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, University of North Texas Health Science Center, and University of Texas System Health Institutions met with the State of Texas Legislature’s House Committee on Public Health. The Texas Legislative House Committee asked the presidents to explore opportunities for the health-related institutions to work together around the concept of health and healthcare education in ways that had not previously occurred. Multiple health topics including rural health, emerging infectious diseases, telehealth, mental/behavioral health, and interprofessional education were divvied up among the four health-related institutions. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center received interprofessional education and took the lead on establishing a statewide task force around interprofessional education and collaborative care. Texas A&M University Health Science Center, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, University of North Texas Health Science Center, University of Texas at Austin, and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center continue to serve as the executive leadership of the organization and provide the primary funding for meetings and trainings.
Officially founded in August of 2015, the charge from the presidents of the health-related institutions to the Texas Interprofessional Education (IPE) Consortium was to share institutional IPE initiatives, experiences, and lessons-learned across the state of Texas. The organization first met in 2015 to share information about IPE programming and initiatives for health professions education. The initial strategic priorities of the consortium were to bring together key representatives from the state’s academic health professions institutions to foster collaboration around interprofessional education. In just three years following tremendous enthusiasm and interest across the state, the Texas IPE Consortium saw a 237% growth rate from an initial membership of eight health-related institutions to approximately 27 institutions representing private universities, public universities, community partners, and healthcare agencies. Currently, the prime initiative of the consortium is to share innovations, lessons-learned, curriculum development, research efforts, guidelines, assessment tools, learning objectives, training materials, and other resources to combat the many barriers to IPE integration into health professions education across the state of Texas.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Texas Interprofessional Practice and Education (IPE) Consortium is to create a Texas Community of Practice (CoP) specializing in interprofessional practice and education in order to share best practices, facilitate the successful implementation of team-based collaborative care in a variety of practice settings, and develop collaborative, innovative, and interprofessional pedagogies that will transform healthcare education across the state of Texas.
Vision Statement
The Texas Interprofessional Practice and Education (IPE) Consortium aspires to become a state and national model of inter-institutional collaboration around interprofessional practice and education to innovate healthcare education, enhance the patient experience, and improve individual and population health outcomes, accessibility, and affordability.
Strategic Plan Through 2020
Moving forward, the Texas IPE Consortium has developed a strategic plan through 2020. During this time, the Texas IPE Consortium is committed to longitudinal and sustainable programming dedicated to curricular development around IPE to improve statewide outcomes for students, faculty, and preceptors. The outcomes will include that
students graduating with degrees in health-related fields from Texas institutions will be competent with the flexibility to practice collaborative care in a complex dynamic healthcare system;
faculty will be developed to facilitate IPE; and preceptors
will be trained in best practice approaches to educate students on the front lines of community focused health care and patient-centered healthcare teams. The overarching goal of facilitating widespread interprofessional practice and education (IPE) in Texas is to prepare all health professional students for deliberately and collaboratively working together to reach a common goal of well-coordinated, high quality patient-centered care for all Texans.
Strategic Goals Through 2020
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Grow biannual meetings in terms of amount and diversity of IPE programming.
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Develop and deploy of a set of interprofessional simulations and/or capstone case studies across Texas institutions with inter-institutional outcomes data collection.
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Establish subcommittees dedicated to research and outcomes, local arrangements, and program development.
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Grow the type and diversity of annual preceptor and faculty development offerings.
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Develop a network of consultants/experts within the consortium that can assist institutions with program development, curriculum mapping, and trainings.
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Develop and launch a Texas IPE Consortium Website.
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Finalize a TeamSTEPPS® white paper supporting the initiative to ensure all learners graduating with a health-related degree in the state of Texas are trained in TeamSTEPPS® Fundamentals 2.0.
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Grow the membership by partnering with related Texas associations, additional Texas institutions, border and regional institutions outside Texas, and community partners.
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Formally organize into a consortium under the legal auspices of Texas universities.
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Establish annual institutional membership dues to offset the cost of programming.
Participating Member Institutions in the Texas IPE Consortium
