Improving Quality of Care while Boosting Productivity

THE PRACTICE

Advanzed Health Care, PLC is a two-physician internal medicine practice in Arlington, VA.

THE PROJECT

Advanzed uses the Total Practice Partner suite of software in the office: Practice Partner Patient Records, Order Entry, Appointment Scheduler, and Medical Billing. The physicians also joined the Practice Partner Research Network (PPRNet) in order to compare their clinical outcomes with those of other practices and to identify potential areas for improvement.

After receiving their first PPRNet report, the physicians at Advanzed used a number of tools within Practice Partner to facilitate improved care:

• Practice Partner's customizable health maintenance templates automatically alerted the providers of overdue lab tests and medications for patients with particular problems such as diabetes.

• The progress note templates in Practice Partner notified Advanzed's providers, during the encounter, of the patient's overdue health maintenance items. 

• Practice Partner displayed reminders that appear whenever a provider opens the patient chart, and staff members began calling patients that were not receiving the recommended therapies. 

THE RESULTS

Using Practice Partner and the data from their PPRNet reports, the practice has dramatically improved patient care in several areas, including the following:

• The proportion of diabetes patients with a microalbumin measure in the past year improved from 4 to 68%

• The percentage of coronary heart disease patients on a lipid-lowering prescription rose from 58 to 77%.

• The proportion of hypertensive patients with a well-controlled blood pressure increased from 45% to 83%.

• The percentage of male patients over 40 on an anti-platelet medication rose over 25%.

Making these quality improvements has not come at the expense of productivity. In fact, Advanzed has enjoyed a boost in productivity since its implementation of Practice Partner. A physician at the practice has been able to:

• Increase patient visits by almost two per day - Boost annual revenue by an esimated $40,000

CONCLUSION

Practice Partner has enabled the physicians at Advanzed Health Care to provide a higher quality of care. After evaluating their practice using reports from the PPRNet on more than 78 indicators of quality, the staff members used features within Practice Partner to better track and manage the care of their patient population. The practice also proved that making quality improvements need not come at the expense of productivity. Practice Partner helped the practice to increase patient volume and revenue without additional office staff.