Since July of this year, the clinics have been diligently working to educate patients about Advance Care Planning (ACP). The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) has wrapped up and the results are in: The clinics contributed to an overall increase of 67.7% improvement across the whole network! Most of the participating clinics not only achieved the goal of a 3% increase over the baseline rate, but far exceeded it.

The goal of these PDSAs is to establish streamlined processes and best practices that will help to support the work, like ACP documentation, moving forward.

Next up for Q2 FY2022:

• Fall Risk Assessment in patients seen in follow-up of acute fall (Primary Care).
• Sufficient smoking history (Urgent Care/Specialty Care) and documentation of cessation counseling (Specialty Care)

These initiatives are rolling out late October- early November and will run through at least the end of the calendar year.

PDSA topics are selected through careful consideration of new and updated care pathways, regulatory or reporting requirements, Patients Are First measures, and measures where VMC is perhaps underperforming. If you have an idea or topic for your clinic/specialty that you would like to have considered for process improvement projects, please contact Gillian_Batchelder@valleymed.org in Clinic Network.