Improving Quality
With the ability to electronically monitor Integrated Behavioral Health programs, Chronic Condition Management programs and Wellness Initiatives, quality management in a Primary Care setting has a much larger scope than just Patient Satisfaction.  Looking in-depth at your practice's aggregate information, and with the ability to drill down to individual providers, you have the information you need to better manage your practice and drive quality improvement.

Patient Satisfaction
Contrary to the typical phone interview Patient Satisfaction programs (HCAHPS, etc), we advocate real-time Patient Satisfaction where you interview the patient at the time of service (better information), gather large enough samples to reliably measure individual providers (providers generally get sued over how they treat their patients, rather than their competence) and respond to the information within minutes (email about critical problems), hours, a day or a week, rather than months after the fact.  Patient Satisfaction is most useful when used to drive process rather than only being used as an annual marketing activity.

Patient Safety
Typically we think about Patient Safety as a hospital related issue, however PCPs need to be vigilant as well.  There are the basic infection and prescription concerns but there are also problems that are not as obvious.  For example, a local hospital's Emergency Department director (Littleton, CO) started looking at admission injury types and found suicide attempts were the #1 admission.  In a study at UT Southwestern, it was shown that ED clinicians missed 94% of patients with suicidal ideation and 80.6% of patients with a suicidal plan.  With feedback from our electronic patient reported screenings, the missed patients with suicidal ideation dropped to 26.9% and the missed patients with a suicidal plan dropped to 0.0%.  Also 2.0% of the ED patients presenting having a suicidal plan.  80.6% of 2.0% of all ED patients extrapolated across the US, is a large number of preventable medical errors.  

The prevalence of suicidal plan found in Primary Care is typically under 25% that of the ED and assuming PCPs are comparable to ED clinicians (you could argue ED clinicians are actually more aware since they see more of it), you can extrapolate some rather large numbers, (in the hundreds of thousands) of patients with a suicidal plan that PCPs miss each year in the US.  Off the radar, but a huge problem that automated electronic screening would help correct.

Quality Initiatives
Working on quality through Patient Safety, Patient Satisfaction or programs like Integrated Behavioral Health, Chronic Condition Management or Wellness Initiatives, if done cost-effectively (ie. self-report automated screening), will benefit your practice in one of two ways.  First, higher quality supports Pay-for-Performance as it evolves, makes your practice run better and as transparency becomes more prevalent, will give your practice a competitive advantage.  Second, something manufacturers have learned, if done properly, as quality goes up, cost is driven down (lower liability, higher throughput, etc).  Demand for quality will become, if it is not already, a central theme for your practice's management.

Please Contact Us to learn more or discuss how Quality Management capabilities might work in your setting.