Quality Improvement

ENSURING OUR HIV CARE IS THE BEST IT CAN BE

WHAT IS QUALITY?

“Quality of care is the degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge.” – Institute of Medicine. Medicare: A Strategy for Quality Assurance. Vol.  1.

QUALITY IMPROVEMENT FOCUSES ON:

  • Improving HIV care
  • Continuously improving processes/systems and health outcomes
  • Meeting the needs of our consumers
  • Engaging everyone involved in the process to improve the healthcare system
  • Gathering just enough data to understand the process
  • Using small sequential improvement tests (Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles) that build on each other
  • Processes, not people
  • Data drives quality improvement actions

QUALITY IMPROVEMENT TEAMS MAKE IMPROVING OUR HIV CARE POSSIBLE:

  • Pediatric Quality Improvement Team – this team focuses on improving processes and systems for the WU Pediatric HIV clinic. The focus of this year’s quality improvement effort is viral suppression among youth through engaging unsuppressed clients with a community nurse.
  • The SPOT Quality Improvement Team – this team focuses on improving processes and systems for the SPOT HIV clinic. The focus of this year’s quality improvement effort is transition to adult medical care.  The first transition element of focus is medication renewals.
  • Core Quality Improvement Team – this team improves the quality of care within the WU Adult Infectious Diseases Clinic. The team includes members from all areas of client care (nurse, physicians, nurse practitioner, case managers, executive director, data coordinators, and consumers). Past quality improvement projects focused on syphilis screening, risk reduction messages, cervical cancer screening (Pap smears), retention, and medication reconciliation.  Currently the team is focused on viral suppression.  The clinic participates in the end+disparities ECHO collaborative and is focused on improving viral suppression among transgender people.
  • Medical Case Management Quality Team – compromised of medical case managers for adults, youth, women, children and families this team works towards improving health outcomes for clients enrolled in medical case management. Past QI projects include standardization and implementation of risk reduction counseling for all case management clients with a newly diagnosed STD and educating clients about CD4 and viral load lab values. Currently the team is focused on improving viral suppression among case managed clients through consistent communication with the client about facilitators and barriers to adherence.
  • St. Louis University Infectious Diseases Clinic Quality Improvement Team – each member of the SLUCare Infectious Diseases Clinic staff participates in the quality improvement team that is charged with improving HIV care provided at this clinical site. The team has previously worked on retention and STD screening. The current QI focus is on improving viral suppression by connecting unsuppressed clients with a Health Coach and Mental Health Specialist.

MEASURING PERFORMANCE:

RESOURCES FOR QUALITY IMPROVEMENT:

Quality Academy– brief tutorials for topical areas of quality improvement