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Driving QI: The power of a web-based dashboard to improve clinical performance on quality measures of sexual and reproductive health
California Family Health Council (CFHC) works with its statewide network of delegate agencies to ensure the quality of Title X funded family planning services. Performance measurement is an important element of CFHC’s broader quality improvement (QI) program. CFHC maintains a statewide database of 2 million annual family planning visits used for federal reporting and QI activities.
Objectives
We created a web-based dashboard using the statewide database to 1) communicate performance across the network, 2) provide tools for quality improvement, and 3) create an annual cycle of performance review and improvement.
Methods
We utilized four measures of performance: women using long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), adolescents using LARC, women using barrier or no method, and women under 26 screened for chlamydia. The dashboard provided detailed reports and resources such as protocols, educational materials, and podcasts. All information was designed to be colorful, easy to understand, and simple to use. Agencies failing to meet a benchmark based on January- June data implemented corrective action plans.
Results
Out of 75 agencies, 73 failed to meet one or more contraceptive benchmarks and 49 failed to meet the Chlamydia benchmark. All but one completed a corrective action plan in August to be implemented by year end. Based on a comparison of 2012 to 2013 data, the number of agencies meeting the benchmarks for the LARC Adolescent and Barrier Method measures increased from 22% to 28% and from 10% to 19%, respectively. Performance for the LARC measure was unchanged. 2013 data will soon be available on the Chlamydia measure.
Conclusions
Use of already-available data allowed health center staff to focus time and effort on QI rather than data collection. A well-organized and easy to use dashboard encourages health center staff with little QI expertise to use data to improve performance.
Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programsAdministration, management, leadership
Communication and informatics
Protection of the public in relation to communicable diseases including prevention or control
Learning Objectives:
List the four major quality improvement elements included in the CFHC dashboard and how they were designed to be easy to use and understand.
Describe the quality improvement cycle used by CFHC to communicate results and coordinate improvement activities.
Discuss the ways the dashboard improved on CFHC’s previous paper-based approaches to quality improvement.
Keyword(s): Performance Measurement, Contraception
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have over 20 years experience on database management and have worked for over four years on perfomance measurement and quality improvement activities for the Title X network of family planning clinics in California.
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.