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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
12/5/2017 12:00:00 AM CENTRAL
Updated: 12/5/2017 8:13:31 AM CENTRAL
For more information, contact Lindsay Huhman.
CRMC Earns the MHA’s Aim for Excellence Award

Capital Region Medical Center earned the Missouri Hospital Association’s Aim for Excellence Award during the MHA’s annual convention in early November. The Aim for Excellence award was introduced in 2016 to recognize Missouri Hospitals’ innovation and outcomes related to the “Triple Aim Approach.”

Capital Region earned this honor for the diligent efforts of our Clinic Quality Team and the Capital Region Physicians group to improve care and the overall health of our community.

This prestigious award recognizes achievement, disseminates successful models, motivates innovation, promotes publication and supports application to nationally based grants and awards.

The “Triple Aim Approach" is intended to improve the individual experience of care, improve the health of populations and reduce per capita costs of care for populations.

Capital Region’s award came specifically in the category of Clinical Excellence – Small and Large Metropolitan Statistical Area Hospitals.

The Application:

With an overall goal to improve care to our patients, improve overall health of our community and prepare physicians and clinic staff for future quality reporting and payment reform changes, Capital Region established goals in several measures: Increase BMI Screening, Improve Breast Cancer Screening, Improve Colon Cancer Screening, Improve Depression Screening and Follow Up Rate, Improve the influenza vaccination rate and improve the pneumonia vaccination rate.

The physician led clinical quality team formed to help meet the requirements both internally and externally all while maintaining the patient as the top priority. Utilizing the A3 template and PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) model, the clinical quality team supported our physicians and staff in developing new processes and reports to measure and monitor progress. The six goal areas mentioned above were identified as measures physicians would clinically adopt that have the potential to benefit large populations of patients across the communities we serve. Data needed to be captured that required incremental changes in the clinic’s workflow, therefore, the Clinical Quality Team developed a three pronged approach to address the various gaps.

The Approach:

Strategy 1: Ensure Accurate Data Capture. The team designed reliable and efficient EMR workflows and then piloted them with a physician champion.

Strategy 2: Publishing identifiable provider data to create competition. Through transparent data sharing to all providers helped generate accountability and competition.

Strategy 3: Engaging accountability at a senior leadership level. Clinic administration held providers accountable to help made the necessary workflow changes by integrating the improvement efforts into the goals set for the providers. .

The Results

The work of the Clinical Quality Team, which includes staff from health informatics, quality, medical affairs and clinic administration, along with Capital Region Physicians providers made dramatic strides in achieving their goals. In fact, every measure surpassed the goal.

What’s more, in a specific example, after completing provider education on the various colon cancer screening options a patient refused to have a recommended colonoscopy. The provider offered the patient an alternative test which was less invasive. The results of this test were positive which spurred the patient to receive the colonoscopy which detected early signs of cancer. The patient was grateful for the alternative option and this case provided an example other clinics to show why offering these screenings is vital to providing safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and patient centered care.

Congratulations to the team, the providers and all the staff for their continued hard work on this project!