Friday, January 23, 2026 • Saturday, January 24, 2026
“Quality Matters” Quality/Population Health in Primary Care and Residency Education
Location
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana
5525 Reitz Ave
Baton Rouge, LA 70809
Registration
To help with planning, please complete the registration form regarding your plans for participation.
Who Should Attend?
- Family Medicine faculty and residents and Primary Care leaders and educators
- Clinic team members engaged in quality improvement
- Anyone committed to strengthening Louisiana’s primary care workforce
Why Attend?
- Build practical quality improvement (QI) skills for real-world primary care
- Learn how to identify opportunities, test changes, and sustain improvements
- Connect with peers working to improve population health across Louisiana
Schedule Overview
Friday July 23, 2026
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8:30 AM – 9:00 AM |
Welcome & Introductions (meeting goals, icebreaker) Emilio Russo, MD |
| 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM | Louisiana from the Outside: Workforce/ Healthcare Data Speaker: Russell Kohl, MD |
| 9:45 AM – 10:00 AM | Break |
| 10:00 AM – 10:15 AM | Welcome and Orientation (15 min) |
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10:00 AM – 4:00 PM |
QI for Physicians: Building Practical Quality Improvement into Everyday Practice |
| 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM |
Section 1: The Why of Quality Improvement (60 min) |
| 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM | Lunch and Networking |
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12:15 PM – 1:15 PM |
Section 2: The How of Quality Improvement (60 min) |
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1:15 PM – 2:15 PM |
Section 3: Applying QI in Clinical Practice (60 min) |
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2:15 PM – 3:00 PM |
Break |
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3:00 PM – 4:00 PM |
Section 4: Building and Sustaining Your Own QI Project (60 min) Theme: Design for durability and impact. Speakers: Russell Kohl, MD and Suzie Daly, MHA |
| 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM |
Networking Reception and Dinner |
Saturday, January 24, 20267:30 AM – 1:00 PM - Faculty Education & Teaching Skills |
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7:30 AM – 8:15 AM |
Connection to Purpose: Why and How Learning Networks Work |
| 8:15 AM – 9:00 AM | South Louisiana Family Medicine Learning Network Business Meeting |
| 9:00 AM – 9:15 AM | Break |
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9:15 AM – 10:30 AM |
Practical Education Workshop (Part 1)
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| 10:30 AM – 10:45 AM | Break |
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10:45 AM – 12:00 PM |
Practical Education Workshop (Part 2)
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| 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM | Lunch /Closing Reflections |
Featured Speakers
Russell Kohl, MD, FAAFP
Chief Medical Officer & Chief Operating Officer, TMF
Dr Russell Kohl, a board-certified family physician, serves as chief medical officer and chief operating officer for TMF Health Quality Institute. In these roles, he is a cross functional leader/mentor responsible for the comprehensive design of innovative approaches to quality improvement, as well as internal quality control, advanced data analytics, senior leader development and mentoring, and directly managing the corporate Advanced Analytics and Innovation Teams. He is an Honors graduate from the Oklahoma State University College of Engineering and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, where he also completed his residency training. He began his career as a full-spectrum family physician in rural Oklahoma, before joining the faculty of the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine as an Associate Professor and the Paul E. Tietze Endowed Chair in Family Medicine, assigned as faculty to the Ramona Rural Residency Program. For the past decade, he has served as a subject matter expert in clinical quality improvement, assisting the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services in improving quality across the spectrum of healthcare providers and helping guide the evolution of health care policy and delivery within the US. A combat veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, he remains a Colonel in the Air National Guard, where he is assigned as the Air Advisor to the Joint Surgeon in Washington, DC. He remains an active member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, where he currently serves as their Speaker of the Congress of Delegates, and continues to provide clinical care as a “street medicine” physician with the not-for-profit Care Beyond the Boulevard, providing mobile and direct medical care to the unhoused population of the Kansas City metro area.
Monica Newton, DO
Director, Northeast Georgia Medical Center Family Medicine Residency
Dr. Newton studied at Auburn University and Midwestern University in Chicago followed by a Family Medicine residency at UAB. After teaching 11 years at UABSelma, Dr. Newton joined Northeast Georgia Physicians Group in Gainesville, Georgia and became founding director of the Family Medicine residency in
2019. She was recently elected President of the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians and provides leadership to the Georgia Residency Collaborative,
launched in 2023 to bring together all 18 family medicine residencies with the goal of building a stronger, more connected future for Georgia family medicine.