PCMH Quality Improvement Results

Stamford Pediatrics has an ongoing continuous quality improvement program. The goal of this program is to improve performance for:

• Preventative Care – Things we do to keep you well (vaccines)
• Reduction of Health Care Costs – Delivering quality care for the minimum cost
• Response to Patient Feedback – We strive to work on areas patients have told us we need to do better

We provide you with annual reports posted in our waiting room and on our website. This year we are pleased to report improvements in several quality initiatives.

Men B Vaccine

In June 2015, ACIP and the CDC voted to recommend the use of Men B vaccines in adolescents and young adults to help prevent Men B disease. Men B disease covers only the B strain which is responsible for 33% of cases and responsible for local outbreaks at Yale, Princeton and Providence College. Men B vaccine to is given to all 16-21 year olds to protect them from Meningitis B. Men B is a 2 dose series given 1 month apart. We started administering the vaccine in November 2015 with a goal of giving it to 10% of all eligible patients in the first 6 months. We were very successful; administering Men B to 24% of the patients surpassing our goal of 10%. In addition, 120 patients completed the 2 dose series.

Reduce Health Care Costs – Urgent Care

We always contact our patients to follow up if we have received a record that a patient went to an urgent care facility. Many times we leave messages and don’t receive a return call. We are following up on the care they received and also reminding them we are available 24/7 and the importance of continuity of care. Our aim is to reduce healthcare costs by having patients treated in-house where the copay is typically less than the copay levied for urgent care facilities. We set a goal to improve by patient contact by 5%. We successfully achieved our goal by reaching 74% of patients for follow up.

Patient Feedback – Reducing Wait Times

The results of our 2015 survey showed that an area to improve on is wait times in each office. Therefore we set a goal to improve our satisfaction rate with wait times by 5% in Darien to 85% and by 5% in Stamford to 72%. We modified the way we schedule certain parts of the day to ensure more timeliness and reduced the grace period for late patients from 30 to 20 minutes to not delay the patients that come after those who are late. We gave patients a mini survey in April/May and the result was Darien improving patient satisfaction to 86% and Stamford improving to 74%.

 

If you have any questions about these initiatives, or would like to provide us with suggestions for future initiatives, please ask to speak with our Practice Administrator. We value your input.