Quality Improvement

In 2017, the average length of a primary care exam in the United States was about 18 minutes, an analysis of more than 21 million primary care visits showed.

Rita K. Kuwahara, MD, MIH, is the 2020 National Copello Health Advocacy Fellow at Doctors for America and a primary care internal medicine resident physician in the Quality Improvement and Physician Leadership Distinction Pathway, caring for patients at the Connecticut Institute for Communities, Inc., a federally qualified health center.

Time to patient presentation was the largest component of time to diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease, according to research published in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

Use of a quality improvement initiative effectively decreased blood transfusions and kept transfusions within the American Association of Blood Banks guidelines in patients undergoing hip and knee arthroplasty, according to results.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Continuous quality improvement theory with patients on peritoneal dialysis may improve quality of care and clinical outcomes, but there are many challenges to implementation, according to a speaker at the Annual Dialysis Conference.

Less than half of currently used kidney disease quality metrics are “highly valid,” according to a structured metric evaluation review conducted by the American Society of Nephrology Quality Committee and subsequently published in JASN. This finding led Mallika L. Mendu, MD, MBA, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and colleagues to “advocate for refining existing measures and developing new metrics that better reflect the spectrum of kidney care delivery.”

AUSTIN, Texas — A quality improvement program that helps facilities make changes in practice structure and share best practices helped improve outcomes among patients with inflammatory bowel disease, according to research presented at Crohn’s and Colitis Congress.

The controversy over whether any amount of alcohol consumption is safe continues, as authors of a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggest that a previous study may have exaggerated the risks associated with alcohol consumption by not considering underreporting.

A survey conducted by the American Heart Association and AMA found that physician assistants, primary care physicians, nurses and medical assistants do not typically undergo refresher training on BP measurement, although there is a broad interest to participate in training modules.

Verana Health and the American Academy of Ophthalmology have launched a new tool aimed at helping physicians improve patient outcomes and provide better care through data insights and trends gathered by the AAO IRIS Registry, according to a press release.