By Cason Benton, M.D., FAAP, Medical Director, Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance
Pediatricians offer adolescents guidance through potentially turbulent times, however, teens have low annual visits. What can offices do to increase adolescent well visit rates? That is the question tackled in the Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance’s (ACHIA) 2019 Collaborative #Stay Well: An Adolescent Well Visit Learning Collaborative.
Join Nola Earnest, M.D., FAAP, #StayWell physician champion and pediatrician with Enterprise Pediatric Clinic (check out her twitter feed @Alabama KidDoc), and Daniel Preud’homme, M.D., FAAP, Director of Adolescent Medicine and Pediatric Healthy Life Center at the University of South Alabama, for a January-September 2019 quality improvement collaborative that:
• fits into a practice’s daily routine
• improves patient outcomes
• improves the practice’s bottom line, and
• provides CME/CEU and 25 Part IV Maintenance of Certification points.
The collaborative will review preventive care recommendations as well as how to navigate thorny issues of consent and confidentiality. Practices may also select optional focus areas – screening for depression, healthy active living, screening for sexually transmitted infections, immunizations, or family planning. New this year: #StayWell CME educational content may be completed at the Alabama Chapter- AAP Fall meeting or online.
Questions? Contact Cason Benton, MD, FAAP, ACHIA Medical Director, at cbenton@peds.uab.edu.
This article first appeared in the Second Quarter 2018 Edition of the Alabama Pediatrician Newsletter. See full newsletter here.
The 2018 National Improvement Partnership Network (NIPN) Annual Meeting will be hosted by ACHIA (Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance) in Birmingham, Alabama, November 12-13.
The meeting on November 12 will be from 8:00 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. and the meeting on November 13 will be from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Elizabeth (Cason) Benton, M.D., has received the 2018 Paul V. Miles Fellowship Award from the American Board of Pediatrics, an honor that highlights a pediatrician who is dedicated to improving the quality of health care for children.
An associate professor in UAB’s Department of Pediatrics, Benton is the founding director of the Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance and also sees patients at the UAB Primary Care Clinic located at Children’s of Alabama. Her interest focus is in quality improvement in children, and she has helped lead the development of quality improvement initiatives at UAB and across the state of Alabama.
Specifically, with the Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance, Benton has developed and led five quality improvement collaboratives across the state regarding obesity treatment and prevention, screening for developmental delay, autism, social emotional issues, and preventing HPV-related cancers.
“Which measures should primary care practices prioritize in the next five years to improve health outcomes for children and youth?”
To answer that question, ACHIA’s partners, including UAB and Children's of Alabama, weighed the impact and feasibility of more than 100 health measures during a year-long process guided by the UAB School of Public Health.
From the measures list, three were determined to provide the best opportunities for improvement:
- Asthma
- Adolescent Well Child Visits
- Developmental Screening
ACHIA’s 2018-2020 quality improvement learning collaboratives will tackle these topics. The collaboratives incorporate the Model for Improvement, run over 9 months and provide Part 4 MOC and CME. Practices complete online modules taught by Alabama experts; benefit from QI coaching; and share best practices with one another on monthly webinars.
Interested in partnering with ACHIA to work with engaged practices on these health topics?
Contact Cason Benton, MD, FAAP cbenton@peds.uab.edu.
Interested in participating in the 2018 Asthma collaborative?
Contact Linda Champion, lchampion@alaap.org.
More information on Continuous Quality Improgement Collaborative:
Which practices should enroll?
- Practices that want to start screening.
- Practices that want to increase screening consistency.
- Practices that want to switch screens from a paper to an electronic format.
The collaborative will run from January to September 2017. Enrollment is through December 31, 2016.
Contact lchampion@alaap.org or click here to learn more.