229846 Use of Disease Registries for Quality Improvement inVulnerable Populations

Monday, November 8, 2010

Prashila Dullabh, MD , Health, National Opinion Reserach Center, Bethesda, MD
Adil Moiduddin, MPA , Health, NORC, Bethesda, MD
Alison Muckle, BA , Health, NORC, Bethesda, MD
Lisa Rosenberger, MPH , Health, NORC, Bethesda, MD
Background: In 2008, the California Health Care Foundation and Tides funded the Tools for Quality Program, a two-year initiative to help community health centers (CHCs) improve population health through the use of advanced disease registries with clinical decision support, enhanced reporting features and automated data entry through electronic interfaces with other systems. With electronic health records, the use of registries or registry-like functionality will play a crucial role in helping providers meet ‘meaningful use' requirements.

Objective/Purpose: The objective is to evaluate the Program, and assess: 1) grantee experience in implementing disease registries, 2) the impact of existing Quality Improvement (QI) and information technology (IT) infrastructure on the success of implementation, 3) impact of the program on QI, and 4) to identify key lessons learned.

Methods: The National Opinion Research Center is conducting a multi-method evaluation of the program. Methods include review of grantee background materials, surveys, grantee telephone interviews and site visits.

Preliminary Findings: Early findings suggest that existing QI processes and teams are important determinants for successful implementation and use of registries. Implementation support and hosting by health center networks is critical for organizations with limited IT resources. Registries can significantly alter clinical workflow and provider and CHC staff engagement is important for adoption. Auto-population of data through interfaces creates opportunities to collect new information but manual data entry is still necessary to effectively use the system. Due to strong investments in legacy systems, migrating to new registries is difficult and can take a long time. Finally registries enable proactive management of vulnerable patients with chronic diseases.

Discussion/Conclusions: Registries are an important tool that can help CHCs more effectively manage their patient populations with chronic diseases. Successful implementation and use of these systems are largely dependent on QI infrastructure, leadership and a willingness to change and redefine work processes.

Learning Areas:
Chronic disease management and prevention
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice

Learning Objectives:
1. Provide an overview of advanced chronic disease registries and their role in population health management 2. Explain the challenges that the grantees encountered in their projects; and 3. Articulate the success factors associated with implementation and use

Keywords: Health Information Systems, Quality Improvement

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the project director for this study
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3401.1: Global Health Informatics Capacity Building and Disease Surveillance 1