Centra Health
Objective:
To improve the quality of care Centra delivers to our patients.
Solution:
The American College of Cardiology (ACC) and Centra are collaborating on a national demonstration project using the ACC’s National Cardiovascular Data Registry (NCDR) Program for Improving Continuous Cardiac Care (IC3). The IC3 Program measures and benchmarks the physician practice adherence to current ACC/American Heart Association (AHA) clinical practice guidelines and performance measures. The ACC compares physician practice data with benchmarked data and will return reports showing each physician’s adherence to best practice guidelines and measures. Centra’s physicians will use these benchmarks to improve patient care.
The Cardiologists’ Electronic Medical Record functionality has been expanded to include the capture of quality indicators with reminders to help physicians follow best practice guidelines. As patients visit Centra’s Cardiology practice, data is collected within an IC3 template as part of the electronic medical record, comparisons are made against best practice quality guidelines and if needed, the clinician is reminded of clinical best practices. Currently 113 clinical data elements collected from both the hospital and physician EMRs are captured electronically and are directly available to the physician as well as sent to the ACC for comparison with best practice standards.
This project has been a great learning experience for the ACC, Centra and the ambulatory EMR vendor in understanding the issues and challenges associated with physician practices and the implementation of data submission programs. The ACC is documenting these findings in a Case Study to support a business case for quality through the linkage of clinical and administrative data the challenges.
The quality of care that Cardiologists deliver has been enhanced as quoted by Dr. Michael Valentine, one of Centra’s cardiologists; “at the 1 month follow up visit after a patient is discharged following a heart attack--the IC3 PROGRAM in my EHR prompts me to ask the patient if they have truly stopped smoking, if they have enrolled in a cardiac rehab program yet, and if they are taking the beta blockers, aspirin and clopidigrel that our guidelines recommend--and, if not, why not?...documenting those issues is important for long term outcomes following an MI and cardiac procedures”.
Contact Information:
Terri Ripley (Terri.Ripley@centrahealth.com, 434-947-4840)
