Practice Improvement for Maintenance of Cerfitification

[suckstobeme]

Hey Guys-
I got the job of doing the Practice Improvement Project for ABEM recertification purposes for my group. I have no idea what I'm doing. What are you guys doing to satisfy this requirement? I'm looking for the most painless way to satisfy this requirement. Any suggestions are welcome.

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[Hair Police]

Hey Guys-
I got the job of doing the Practice Improvement Project for ABEM recertification purposes for my group. I have no idea what I'm doing. What are you guys doing to satisfy this requirement? I'm looking for the most painless way to satisfy this requirement. Any suggestions are welcome.

Poll the members of your practice for what they feel is the most difficult aspect of your institution - what holds up patients from being discharged, or moving upstairs, etc. Then use your EMR or look up some records to get some data. If there's an obvious solution, then present that to administration. It could be adding a swing shift on Mondays and Tuesdays because they are especially brutal at your shop. Maybe it means letting admin know that if they hire another janitor, you can see another 10 patients per day, more than paying for the added help. Or simplifying the admission algorithm.

I created care plans for some of our highest utilizers.

 

[suckstobeme]

Poll the members of your practice for what they feel is the most difficult aspect of your institution - what holds up patients from being discharged, or moving upstairs, etc. Then use your EMR or look up some records to get some data. If there's an obvious solution, then present that to administration. It could be adding a swing shift on Mondays and Tuesdays because they are especially brutal at your shop. Maybe it means letting admin know that if they hire another janitor, you can see another 10 patients per day, more than paying for the added help. Or simplifying the admission algorithm.

I created care plans for some of our highest utilizers.

HP-
Interesting, but not really interested in doing that much work. I kinda think that it's a ridiculous requirement, and I'm only interested in doing the bare minimum amount of work to satisfy the requirement for myself and the rest of the group. A lot of the solutions you present above are good for individual requirements, but I want one thing that will satisfy the requirement for multiple members of my group.
To be very honest with you, while it would be nice if it actually improved my practice, I don't really care too much. I just want to check the box.

 

[Hair Police]

If you're going to involve multiple people, I would create a committee and meet at least once. This could easily be folded into a regular business meeting. You can poll people then (though, like anyone savvy, have some ideas prepared). But I don't know how you're going to get away from doing something substantial if you're doing a project for everyone in your practice.

 

[suckstobeme]

Actually, now that I'm looking into this, I think it's a lot less involved then what I was initially thinking.

http://bcove.me/wv73bj7u

 

[WilcoWorld]

Hair Police describes something that might actually help your group. While that's a great idea, it's not at all necessary. There is no requirement from ABEM that your APP PI activity actually help anyone.

Here is a list of pre-approved activities straight from the horse's mouth.

Looking at the list, two things become clear: A) Your institution is probably already measuring several of these things (like door-to-balloon time for STEMI). B) Many of these things are not evidence based, and some of them may actually be harmful (see, COMMIT-2 trial and the recent meta analysis of beta blockers after MI).

If you want to have a positive impact, this is a way to convince your partners to participate. On the other hand, if you just want everybody to be able to check a box on ABEM.org, you can do this quite painlessly.