New Study: QIO Efforts Show Improvement in Health Care Quality

A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine indicates the intensive efforts by the nation’s Quality Improvement Organizations likely led to nationwide improvements in the quality of health care. Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality’s Dale Bratzler, DO, MPH and Allen Ma, PhD co-authored the study along with other federal researchers.

 
Full Report:Assessment of the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization Program
Annals of Internal Medicine, September 5, 2006 Volume 145, Number 5, P. 342 www.annals.org

Key Findings:
QIOs worked intensively with a subset of health care providers in physician offices, hospitals*, nursing homes, and home health agencies. These providers achieved greater improvement on 18 of 20 clinical quality measures than providers that did not work intensively with a QIO. Overall, improvement was seen in 34 of 41 measures in the 7th Scope of Work (the QIO contract period 2002-2005), the study concludes.

Providers working closely with QIOs improved to a greater extent than those not working with QIOs.

Significant findings include:

  • Nursing homes improved on all five measures. Of significant note, QIOs and nursing homes working most closely together halved the number of nursing home residents in chronic pain (from 13% of residents to 6.2%), and halved the percentage of residents who were restrained (from 16.5% to 8.4%).
  • Home health providers improved on 11 of 11 clinical quality measures.
  • Physician offices working with QIOs improved in all four measures studied. The greatest improvement was seen in the quality of care for patients with diabetes. Timely blood sugar testing improved by about 9% and timely lipid profile testing improved by about 11%.
  • Physician practices working intensively with QIOs increased the number of women receiving timely mammograms and the number of patients with diabetes receiving a key retinal eye exam. Practices not working with their QIO saw decreases in these two measures.
  • Hospital care improved in 19 of 21 measures studied.

*The study could not compare hospitals that worked with QIOs with those who did not because QIOs worked with hospitals statewide.