Practice-Driven Quality Improvement

Part of good medical practice is a commitment to lifelong learning.

At CPSA, we are committed to empowering physicians in their journey of professional growth and personal development. We know many factors contribute to physician health and productivity, and paying attention to these factors is an important part of providing patients with quality care.

Our goal is to support physicians in accessing resources and knowledge to incorporate continuous quality improvement into their practice, thereby fostering a quality culture for Alberta physicians. Recognizing that personal factors and system stressors can influence performance, we also focus on a physician’s personal development.

We want PPIP to empower physicians to “shift the curve” and continually strive for small changes that can make a difference, both personally and professionally, in pursuit of providing the best care for Albertans.

Practice-driven quality improvement can be done individually (e.g. assessing your prescribing), by participating in a clinic group practice change (e.g. changing office processes to increase efficiency or access), or through a systems-level project (e.g. participating as a local leader in a multi-site, patient outcome initiative). Here are the basics to help you get started:

• Understand your practice through the use of data. For example:
  • Review prescribing data through MD Snapshot-Prescribing.
  • Identify and reflect on risk factors through your MD Snapshot-Practice Checkup.
  • Evaluate your clinic’s screening or processes (such as third next appointment availability) by looking at your EMR data.
  • Regularly study the Health Quality Council of Alberta’s panel reports or Alberta Health Services’ dashboard metrics.
• After reviewing your data and identifying improvement opportunities, develop an action plan.

A standards of practice quality improvement activity involves using CPSA’s Standards of Practice as a benchmark to reflect on your practice and identify opportunities for improvement. For example:

• Review your EMR data and self-assess whether you’re meeting the requirements of the Patient Record Content
• Once you’ve successfully reviewed and assessed your practice, use this information to identify opportunities for practice improvements. Then create an action plan to address gaps.
• Once you’ve executed your plan, evaluate its success using quality improvement methodology and determine your next steps.
• Then develop an action plan.
• If you’re part of a group practice, strengthen and enhance it through our Group Practice Review.

Facilitation is mandatory for a personal development activity, and is encouraged for the practice-driven and standard of practice activities. Facilitation helps with objectively interpreting the data, looking at it in context and identifying opportunities.

A facilitator can be a colleague, supervisor, trained coach or facilitator, or other individual who is qualified to assist you in framing your data in a constructive manner.

Dedicated modules for self-facilitated reflection are also acceptable. Resources and tools are available for self-reflection through the Physician Learning Program,  My Practice Improvement (MyPi) or MyL3Plan. Additionally, R2C2 is an evidence-based model for providing feedback and coaching through interactive conversation.

An important part of completing a PPIP activity includes creating an action plan to document how you plan to address and implement your opportunities for improvement.

We recommend using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely) goals to increase the likelihood of success. You may also want to consider familiarizing yourself with the iterative nature of quality improvement, for example by reviewing the PDSA (Plan Do Study Act) cycle.

We have a template for an action plan on our website physicians can use, or you can create your own.