Evaluation of Process and Effects of Change

Commonly Used Diabetes Improvement Measures

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
www.qualitytools.ahrq.gov
QualityTools is a clearinghouse for practical, ready-to-use tools for measuring and improving the quality of health care.

HealthPartners: 2005 Clinical Indicators Report

Report of quantitative indicators that measure clinical performance related to the prevention, diagnosis, and management of specific disease processes. See Optimal Diabetes Care on pages 13-17 and page 2 for graphs showng improvement in A1C, cholesterol, blood pressure, and complications. For the complete report, visit www.healthpartners.com/files/28455.pdf

Institute for Health Care Improvement (IHI)

Idealized Design of Office Practices
IHI's office practice design initiative offers a comprehensive redesign of the office system as a whole. The aim is to improve the performance of clinical office practices through dramatic and sustained system-level changes. It designs, tests, and deploys new models of office-based practices capable of fundamentally improved performance levels, better clinical outcomes, lower costs, higher satisfaction, and improved efficiency in a more rewarding work setting.

Quality Improvement
This section includes content on quality improvement including: change concepts, measures, resources, improvement stories, and downloadable tools - to help make improvements successful.

Chronic Conditions: Diabetes
This is a comprehensive website with a great deal of information to assist providers in their efforts to improve diabetes care in their facilities.

National Diabetes Quality Improvement Alliance
www.nationaldiabetesalliance.org
The Diabetes Quality Improvement Project is now known as the National Diabetes Quality Improvement Alliance. The alliance is collaboration between 13 private and public national organizations to develop and maintain a national performance measurement set for diabetes.

This group developed and implemented a comprehensive set of national performance measures for diabetes evaluation and quality improvement.⁷Performance measures retrospectively assess the level of care delivered across an entire population with diabetes. The measures have a firm evidence base, feasibility and reliability, and variability across populations so that improvement can be monitored. www.nationaldiabetesalliance.org/Final2005Measures.pdf

The measures are NOT guidelines for care and do not reflect either the minimal or maximal level of care that should be provided to the individual patient with diabetes. The measures are indicators or tools to assess the level of care provided within systems of care to populations of patients with diabetes.

NCQA/ADA Diabetes Physician Recognition Program
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) assesses, measures, and reports on the quality of care provided by the nation's managed care organizations. More than three quarters of Americans enrolled in HMOs are in plans that have been reviewed by NCQA. NCQA also manages the evolution of HEDIS®, the performance measurement tool used by more than 90 percent of the nation's health plans.

The NCQA's Diabetes Physician Recognition Program cosponsored by the American Diabetes Association is a voluntary program for individual physicians or physician groups that provide care to people with diabetes. Physicians in all settings can achieve recognition by submitting data that demonstrates they are providing quality diabetes care. The program assesses physician performance on 8 key measures of care for pediatric patients and 11 key measures of care for adult patients. The measures relate to A1C testing, eye exams, foot exams, blood pressure measurement, kidney assessment, lipid profile, tobacco use and counseling, self-management education, medical nutrition counseling, self-monitoring of blood glucose, and patient satisfaction.

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