Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Welcome to this new issue of the NetHealth Quality Dashboard, bringing you information and insights into CME, MOC, and data-driven outcomes analysis for promoting continuous clinical improvement. Feel free to pass along the NetHealth Quality Dashboard to your colleagues and to let us know about issues in the field that you need to know more about. Sincerely, Lauren Patrick, MS President, NetHealth LLC In this issue: NetHealth’s 1stAscent PQRS Registry Open for Submission! Establishing Measures for PI CME / Part IV MOC: How to Get Started Performance Improvement for PI Programs Commitment to Change leads to better outcomes ASN Performance Improvement Module Establishing measures for PI modules OR How to get started It all begins with the measures. Good performance measures are essential to assessing quality in health care. One of the biggest steps in setting up any improvement project is not only determining what to measure, but also how best to do so. In developing measures for a PI module, there are many and varied considerations. Most importantly, the measure set need to be relevant to the user and evidence based. That is, all chosen measures should have a common patient population, based upon clearly defined clinical criteria enabling the participant to focus improvement efforts to make measurable change. In the best cases, we strive for patient outcome measures, but sometimes process measures are also found to be appropriate, when evidence exists that the process has the potential to yield definable improvement in patient outcomes. In defining measures, NetHealth has worked with a variety of partners choosing measure sets for projects. The measure set size is adjusted taking several factors into consideration. We look for benchmarks to provide users with a deeper assessment of their performance and include peer comparison when available. We work with our partners to ensure the measures are robust, measureable, relevant, and consistent in patient populations. Commitment to Change leads to better outcomes. Statements of commitment to change are recommended to both promote and assess continuing education interventions of all kinds. It has been demonstrated in many programs that asking participants to formalize a Commitment to Change (CTC) as part of the process, and including an aspect of self-reported change following the event, can significantly increase the impact of the education.1,2 NetHealth has worked with several partners to implement CTC programs. By choosing changes that have been categorized by type, the participant takes an active part in defining their own change effort. After some time for implementation has passed, the system sends out reminders and captures the self-reported impact of the change for a more complete picture of the process. This results in better outcomes for the participants and valuable data for the sponsor of the program. The kind of changes chosen, barriers encountered, and changes actually made, at individual and summary levels, are easily assessed. In reviewing the data to date, CTCs have been broken down into the following categories: Diagnosis & Screening, Treatment, Quality Improvement, Safety, Clinician-Patient Communication, Documentation, and Patient Education. Email reminders to participants are built into the system to track barriers in 8 different categories as well as successes and further commitments. This generates powerful data on the CTC successes, challenges, and the overall impact of programs. Full Service Commitment NetHealth provides a full set of support services, including strategy, analytical insight and tools, full hosting support, and total customer support. Contact Us Let us help you develop impacting medical education systems with measureable outcomes. Call or email us today! NetHealth’s 1stAscent PQRS Registry Open for Submission! We proudly announce the launch of NetHealth’s PQRS registry system 1stAscent! NetHealth has been an approved CMS registry since 2009, developing private, members-only registries. Since that time, hundreds of hours of clinician experiences have contributed to refining this system to be one of the most straightforward, user-friendly registries of its kind. Suitable for submission by any CMS ‘eligible professional’ with a valid CMS NPI number and Medicare Part B claims (including NPs and PAs), the system guides users through an easy 4-step submission process, garnering the ability to gain an incentive bonus of 1% on all 2011 Medicare Part B FFS claims, and also providing valuable insights into practice patterns to encourage and reinforce the integration of evidence-based guidelines in practice. Check out the 1stAscent Registry and share the news with your colleagues and constituents! www.1stAscentPQRS.com Is your PI CME program making a difference? …or PI for the PI! Once a PI initiative is underway, measuring outcomes for the program as a whole is just as interesting and exciting as overseeing the change in individual participant outcomes. What should you track? In order to continually improve our modules, here are some of the important measurements to track and review in regular reporting cycles: Overall improvement in measures for ALL completers Improvement for measures selected vs. all measures (sometimes, just the act of tracking all measures can bring about overall improvement through awareness) Interventions and improvement resources that correlate with the largest improvement gains Improvement in process measures compared to improvement in outcomes measures. Launch of ASN Performance Improvement Module In a collaborative partnership between the American Society of Nephrology and NetHealth a comprehensive Practice Improvement Module (PIM) on the subject of Dialysis is now available. The module walks users through processes of self and systems assessment, patient chart abstraction, improvement planning and implementation, and reabstraction. Suitable for nephrologists and any appropriate ABMS-certified physician participating in the MOC program, participation in the module qualifies for award of 20 ABIM Maintenance of Certification (MOC) points and CME credits. Physicians certified by ABFM can earn credit toward MC-FP. Additionally, it is open to group participation. For more details, visit the ASN site 1Domino, F., Chopra, S., Seligman, M. Sullivan, K. and Quirk, M.E. (2011). The impact on medical practice of commitments to change following CME lectures: A randomized controlled trial. Medical Teacher, 33: e495–e500. 2Policy and Medicine. (2011, October 11). Effectiveness of commitment to change CME. http://www.policymed.com/2011/10/effectiveness-of-commitment-to-change-cme.html Our mailing address is: NetHealth LLC 5 Great Valley Parkway, Suite 210 Malvern, PA 19355 Our telephone: 610.590.2229 Our email: info@nethealthinc.com Copyright (C) 2011 NetHealth LLC All rights reserved.