Quality of Care Program

New - Medication safety: The Physician’s Role in Medication Reconciliation This patient safety unit provides information for physicians to heighten awareness of the integral role of medication reconciliation in the safe use of medications. AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ available.

The AMA's Quality of Care Program includes various initiatives undertaken on behalf of America's patients. The campaign activities fall under four primary categories: Safety, Advocacy, Measurement and Education.

Through awareness programs, confidential error-reporting systems and patient education efforts, the AMA is working diligently to promote a culture of patient safety. By asking, listening and learning, the AMA and its physician members indeed can play a role in improving the health of the nation.

Visit the following links to learn more about each initiative and how you can get involved.

Safety
With its Making Strides in Safety® program, the AMA is helping physicians help patients by encouraging physician leadership and involvement in improving patient care. As a national leader in patient safety, the AMA diligently pursues initiatives that best serve the changing needs of America's physicians and patients.

In the quest to educate patients about the important role they play in their own health care, the AMA also took part in the "Five steps to safer health care" initiative, which offers patients evidence-based practical tips to help improve the safety of the care they receive. "Patient participation has such a positive impact on the success of medical outcomes," said President-elect, J. James Rohack, MD.

The AMA is a dedicated sponsor of the National Patient Safety Foundation, which works to improve the safety of patients through research, communication and the development of solutions. The AMA established the NPSF in 1996, and has since donated more than $7 million to the foundation and remained actively involved in its governance.

Advocacy
The AMA lobbied aggressively for federal patient safety legislation that would create a voluntary, confidential error-reporting system. This system would end the blame-and-shame era and establish Patient Safety Organizations in which health care professionals could share data about medical errors with others. "When physicians can report errors in a voluntary and confidential manner, everyone benefits," said Dr. Rohack, MD.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released the Common Formats for event reporting in hospitals to Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs), as authorized by the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (PSQIA). The Common Formats have been developed by outside contractors to facilitate reporting by providers to PSOs and to accelerate the development of the ability to aggregate comparable patient safety information to identify new opportunities for safety improvement.

Given the technical nature of the Common Formats for reporting, AHRQ has contracted with the National Quality Forum (NQF), a nonprofit organization focused on health care quality measurement standardization, to assist with gathering and analyzing feedback on the Common Formats. AHRQ plans to issue updates and revisions based upon user input. In this sense, the comment protocol differs from traditional comment periods in that AHRQ would like to receive comments from “users” as the formats are utilized in the reporting process in addition to initial comments. Comments will be accepted by NQF on an ongoing basis, as AHRQ and NQF recognize the evolving nature of these formats. An NQF expert panel has been convened to handle the review of comments. The AMA nominated patient safety experts to serve on the NQF panel and two of our nominees have been appointed to the panel. In addition, the AMA will be submitting written comments on the proposed Common Formats to the NQF.

According to AHRQ, this initial release could be updated in the next six to nine months. Efforts to develop formats for reporting in other clinical settings, such as physician offices, have not yet begun, as AHRQ wants to focus on this initial release. However, some of the Common Formats for hospital reporting can be used in physician offices, such as Medication Events.

Access the AHRQ Common Formats Web site

Read the Common Formats notice published in the Federal Register. Also in PDF format (PDF, 57KB)

Measurement
Bridging the gap between medical education and the examining room, the AMA convenes the Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement, which focuses on clinical quality improvement and patient safety. This physician-led Consortium is composed of national clinical and methodological experts who develop tools and programs designed to help physicians improve care for specific, measurable areas of their practice.

Together, members of the Consortium have created 14 evidence-based performance measurement sets, making it easy for physicians to analyze their performance and improve the quality of treatment their patients receive. The Consortium supports building quality improvement tools into electronic health records, which make medical care more efficient and safe, as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals have constant access to patient data — no more deciphering of handwriting.

Education
Help your patients understand. The inability for patients to understand medical information is preventing physician/patient communication, decreasing the quality of medical treatment for an estimated 90 million Americans. The AMA was the first national organization to recognize the direct effects of limited health literacy, and the AMA Foundation has since developed the Health Literacy Educational Kit to help educate physicians and other health care professionals on how to approach this issue with their patients. "Train the Trainer" sessions have also prepared teams of physicians to lead national seminars to help health care professionals address low health literacy in patients.

To date, more than 20,000 health professionals have been reached through the kit and training program — 68 percent of participants report they have changed the way they communicate with their patients.

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