A best-of-research plenary presentation at HM15 in National Harbor, Md., described a project to link physicians’ schedules to the electronic health record (EHR) in order to provide real-time, individualized performance feedback on key quality improvement and value metrics.
The abstract’s lead author, Victoria Valencia, MPH, a research data and project manager at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), explains that quality improvement priorities have driven feedback of quality metrics at the department level.
“Where I came in was to try to get the same quality metrics down to the level of the team,” she says. “We take data from our EPIC EHR, clean it up by removing outliers, merge it with our online scheduling program, and provide a robust visual presentation of individualized, real-time performance feedback to the clinical team.”
–Dr. Valencia
One example is counting the total number of phlebotomy “sticks” per day, per patient. Reporting this data helped to reduce the number of “sticks per day” by 20%, to 1.6 from 2.0. A similar approach is used for care transitions and the percentage of discharges with high-quality, after-visit summaries.
“The feedback is timely and actionable and allows the teams to address areas needing improvement,” Valencia says.
How have the doctors responded to this feedback?
“Our division is used to receiving quality feedback as part of an ongoing process that includes working meetings where the metrics are reviewed,” she says, adding that there hasn’t been pushback from the teams over these reports.