Highland Family Medicine Nurse Practitioner Program Receives Programmatic Accreditation

The National Nurse Practitioner Residency and Fellowship Consortium (NNPRFTC) is pleased to announce the initial accreditation of another postgraduate Nurse Practitioner residency: Highland Family Medicine’s (HFM) Nurse Practitioner Residency Program (NPRP) headquartered in Rochester, New York. NNPRFTC’s Accreditation Commission’s initial programmatic accreditation is for three years. The current trainees will be considered to have completed an accredited program.

 

The HFM Nurse Practitioner Residency Program was created in 2016, training two nurse practitioner residents per year. HFM, the sponsoring organization, is located in Rochester, serving more than 20,000 patients through 60,000 encounters in 2017. A third of these visits were provided by residents. The HFM clinic is the third oldest physician residency program in the country, internationally recognized for leadership and innovation in the integration of behavioral health into primary care practice. These qualities were brought into the NP residency program at its inception in 2016, where residents from all disciplines train together to create an inter-professional collaborative learning environment.

HFM is accredited through Joint Commission and certified through NCQA as a level 3 Patient Centered Medical Home, while also receiving a level 3 ACGME accreditation and now, accreditation from the NNPRFTC Accreditation Commission. So far, 75% of its graduates to work within the UR Medicine system, and 100% of graduates have stayed in primary care. The program receives funding from the HRSA Primary Care Training and Enhancement grant shared with the University of Rochester School of Nursing to cover the program from 2016 through 2020.

 

The program is poised to meet a need for expert primary care providers in an area that includes both urban and rural underserved populations. “We are so proud of our NP residency and the work that Kristin E. Smith, DNP, FNP-c, AAHIVS, Program Director, Nurse Practitioner Residency Program, and her colleagues have done,” said Thomas L. Campbell, chair, University of Rochester Department of Family Medicine.