2015 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo

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Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

324170
A. Fundamentals of continuous quality improvement (CQI)


Saturday, October 31, 2015 : 9:20 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Rae Starr, L.A. Care Health Plan, Santa Monica, CA
This module of the Learning Institute introduces and explains the steps in a continuous quality improvement process.  It also introduces common patient experience surveys, and then describes the difference between patients’ assessments of the quality of health care services, and clinical measurements of quality of care.  This section describes the functions and departments that typically exist in health care organizations, and maps these to the steps in CQI, and to the domains of service measured on patient experience surveys.  Stakeholders and process owners who own touch-points to providers and patients are noted in particular.  “Thinking CAHPS”: Identifying settings in health care organizations where findings and patient voice from the survey should be present in the room to inform decisions and discussions that impact services to patients.

Learning Areas:

Administration, management, leadership
Biostatistics, economics
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Program planning
Public health administration or related administration
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Describe five specific steps in evidence-based CQI processes and the use of patient surveys in identifying and resolving deficiencies in the quality of services. Explain how nine measures of service quality map to specific stakeholders and process owners in the health care organization. Describe typical functions in health care organizations and identify at least three departments that own touch-points with providers and patients.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Served 8 years as Senior Biostatistician at the nation’s largest public health plan, managing the CAHPS patient experience survey program, covering each skill area in Learning Institute workshop. Interacted with each functional department rated in CAHPS; designed analytic plans to guide interventions; designed contracts for ancillary services to enhance the quality of the surveys. Delivered agency-sponsored briefings and invited presentations on this material at national conferences focused on the CAHPS surveys and Medicaid quality improvement.
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: 1004.0: Effective use of patient experience surveys to improve quality of services in health plans, agencies, and group practices--Fee: $300