Health IT Enabled Quality Improvement: Using the Guide to Improving Care Processes and Outcomes in Health Centers

Quality improvement is a core activity as health centers try to continually enhance access for patients and maximize value and efficiency. Changes to healthcare policy increasingly tying payment to quality make effective QI a business imperative for all health centers, particularly those serving homeless and other high-need populations. In this session, we will review relevant national data and trends and possible drivers of those. We will then dig into a quality improvement approach centered on the Guide to Improving Care Processes and Outcomes in Health Centers which provides a framework and tools for documenting, analyzing, sharing, and improving key workflows and information flows that drive improvement and outcomes. Together, we will begin to analyze the current state (What is?), including patient and staff experience, information collection, and workflows, to identify areas for improvement (What should be?), and where to find evidence-based approaches to making needed changes (What can we do?).