Sharing Your Practice Improvement Ideas (part 2 in an ongoing series)

Throughout this year, ABO is highlighting the inspired and resourceful ideas that have been submitted by Diplomates to satisfy the Quality Improvement Activity (QIA) portion of their MOC. Our goal in sharing these innovative QIAs is to allow the entire Diplomate community and the patients that they serve to benefit from these improvement efforts.

Dr. Jennifer Grill, an ABO Diplomate from Albany, NY, was inspired by the webinar ABO hosted in April – All You Need to Know about Practice Guidelines by Dr. Kristen Thelen. Dr. Grill was concerned that her practice might not be following the evidence-based guidelines closely enough. So, she devised a grading system that enabled her to objectively evaluate how closely specific practice guidelines were being followed. She implemented a chart review by pulling charts of patients seen in 2020 and used her grading system to give each chart a score. She is able to apply that same grading system to incoming charts so that she can track her improvement in adhering to practice guidelines over time. In the brief time since the webinar, she has already noticed a significant improvement.

If you missed this webinar, the recorded version is now available on the ABO website, free of charge to ABO Diplomates and Active Candidates You may earn 2 hours of COPE-approved CE by watching the webinar and taking a 20-question quiz.

Dr. James Mowbray, an ABO Diplomate from Chandler, AZ, was inspired by taking CE courses in medico-legal aspects of patient charting and prevention of medical errors. His office had recently implemented a new EMR system with limited descriptors for clinical examination data. Following the CE courses, Dr. Mowbray pulled 30 records of patients seen for comprehensive examinations and determined that 56% of the data fields were filled with the check box “WNL.” Concerned that this was unacceptable documentation, he proceeded to create custom drop-down menus and fillable blank fields for each of the 14 data fields. Six months later, he pulled another 30 patient charts and discovered that 0% of his data fields now contained “WNL.” Dr. Mowbray plans to monitor his patient charts on a quarterly basis and share his customizable data menus with his colleagues.

Thank you to Dr. Grill and Dr. Mowbray for allowing us to share their inspiring quality improvement activities.  If you have a QIA that you’re willing to share with your colleagues, please let us know. We’d love to feature your ideas in the next newsletter!