American Journal of Medical Quality

Patient empowerment is a new concept in health care that has now been extended to the domain of patient safety. Within the framework of the development of the new World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care, the authors conducted a review of the literature from 1997 to 2008 to identify the evidence supporting programs aimed at encouraging patients to take an active role in their care. Patient empowerment is an integral part of the WHO hand hygiene multimodal strategy. Hand hygiene promotion strategies that have demonstrated evidence of successfully empowering patients include one or all of the following components: educational tools, motivation and reminder tools, and role modeling. What is important is that programs and models to empower patients must be developed with an inbuilt evaluation component that includes both qualitative and quantitative measures to determine not only what works but under what conditions and within which organizational context.

In recent years, hospitals and payers have increased their efforts to improve the quality of patient care by encouraging provider adherence to evidence-based practices. Although the individual provider is certainly essential in the delivery of appropriate care, a team perspective is important when examining variation in quality. In the present study, the authors modeled the relationship between a measure of aggregate job satisfaction for members of primary care teams and objective measures of quality based on process indicators and intermediate outcomes. Multilevel analyses indicated that aggregate job satisfaction ratings were associated with higher values on both types of quality measures. Team-level job satisfaction ratings are a potentially important marker for the effectiveness of primary care teams in managing patient care.

Identifying, understanding, and addressing clinical variation is a useful tool to promote appropriate care while helping control health care costs. Although accurate, relevant, and useful data are important in the process, successfully engaging physicians to change behavior is often the most significant challenge. Using a commercially available variation analysis process, a California Medicaid managed care plan identified significant network practice pattern variation. A team of panel practitioners then developed a strategy to reduce overuse of 5 identified behaviors. The intervention was evaluated using a pre—post comparison of the panel’s use of the 5 behaviors. During the preintervention period, narcotics, muscle relaxants, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and spinal injections increased between 8% and 18% per month. Postintervention, the trends reversed. The differences were statistically significant (P < .0001) for muscle relaxant use, narcotic use, overall MRI use, and spinal injections. Peer comparison data and respectful feedback was associated with significant change in patterns of overuse.

A growing public health concern over the increasing prevalence of adolescent overweight and obesity and 2007 Expert Committee recommendations on child and adolescent overweight and obesity prompted a performance improvement project at 9 school-based health centers (SBHCs) in Delaware. Body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure measurements were assessed for 1548 students during the 2008-2009 school year. Students identified as having BMI or blood pressure readings out of the normal range were offered nutritional and/or medical services at the center and referred to their primary care physicians, when necessary, for further medical follow-up. Four of the centers additionally assessed their students for needed immunizations, availability of medical insurance, access to a medical home, and psychosocial risk factors. Students identified as in need of additional services were given appropriate referrals. Follow-up data are now being collected for students identified to be at risk.

Since 2006, the Joint Commission has required all hospitals to have a process in place for medication reconciliation (MR). Although it has been shown that MR decreases medical errors, achieving compliance has proven difficult for many health care institutions. This article describes a housestaff-championed intervention of a “hard stop” for on-admission MR orders that led to a statistically significant increase in compliance that was sustained at 6 months after intervention. Academic medical centers, which comprise large numbers of housestaff, can improve compliance with on-admission MR by engaging housestaff in the development of solutions and in communication to their peers, leading to sustained results.

The patient safety vision at Baylor Health Care System (BHCS) has 3 components: (1) achieving no preventable deaths, (2) ensuring no preventable injuries, and (3) seeking no preventable risk. These goals require strategic efforts in the categories of culture, processes, and technology. Culture focuses on tactics such as teamwork training and quality improvement education. Processes are measured using the percentage adoption of a variety of target clinical processes such as order set use and adherence to National Patient Safety Goals. Technology includes focus areas such as clinical decision support and reliability of the electronic health record. BHCS has also achieved significant systemwide standardization of safety processes and development of the systemwide Office of Patient Safety to facilitate the implementation of evidence-based patient safety practices. Associated with these improvements, BHCS has made significant progress toward reducing hospital-standardized mortality rates and rates of hospital-acquired adverse events.

Rates of adherence to 2 quality measures, modeled after Heathcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures, were evaluated in a pediatric population in a convenient care (retail medicine) clinic setting. The measures were appropriate testing for children with pharyngitis and appropriate treatment for children with upper-respiratory infection (URI). The convenient care clinic (CCC) achieved a ranking above the HEDIS 90th percentile for the pharyngitis measure and approximately midway between the 50th and 90th percentiles for the URI measure for the 2007 reporting period. This represents the third major study reporting quality of care for pharyngitis in a CCC setting and the first study for URIs. Other aspects of quality—namely access, follow-up, and equity—are also reported on for the population in question.

The American College of Medical Quality is a national organization of health care professionals who are interested in the advancement of medical quality as a field. Composed primarily of doctorate-level individuals in medicine, dentistry, and podiatry, it also includes affiliate members in preprofessional training as well as nursing. Origins of the organization date to 1973, when it was first called the American College of Utilization Review Physicians. It is formally recognized by the American Medical Association and holds a seat in its House of Delegates. The College views the advancement of medical quality as a field of study within itself and offers multiple venues for self-education, testing, and professional networking for its members. Recently, rising national awareness of quality in health care as a field of endeavor has elevated enrollment levels and increased interest in the organization.