One of the mandates of meaningful use is to leverage EHRs to reduce the cost of health care. In 2017, the cost of diagnosed diabetes was $327 billion in the United States—that is just for 1 year. In this assignment, you will explore quality measures associated with diabetes, as well as the quality improvement measures that will provide a means for gauging the health plan and provider performance. The goal of QPP is to improve health care (in this case diabetes in the patient population). By improving diabetes care, more patients will be able to manage their treatment effectively; more patients at risk for type 2 diabetes will be counseled on risk factors in a more effective manner, which may result in fewer new cases; there will be fewer readmissions for diabetes, etc.—all of which will lower the cost of care for diabetes.

Assignment Resources

National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Adult Diabetes Care

National Diabetes Statistics Report, 2020

Quality Payment Program – Explore Measures & Activities

• Choose one of the following options as the method for completing the assignment

1-1/2- to 2-page paper

• Respond to the scenarios below:

Scenario 1

• Your organization has decided to voluntarily report the standards for adult diabetes care, which covers 6 areas of outpatient care: hemoglobin A1c management, lipid management, urine protein testing, eye examination, foot examination, and blood pressure management.

Identify the data that would need to be collected for each area to make the report. Determine how the data should be entered into the EHR so it can be understood by others outside your organization (so it meets meaningful use requirements). In other words, what comprises the data? What format should it be entered? This is especially relevant to qualitative data.

Explain the rationale for each quality measure.

Scenario 2

In reporting these measures, the organization has learned that it falls short of benchmarks and needs to improve on 4 of the 6 areas: hemoglobin A1c management, urine protein testing, foot examination, and blood pressure management.

• Identify the data that will need to be collected to facilitate quality improvement in each of these areas. Determine how the data should be entered into the EHR and explain how that will be used to improve quality.

Identify the benchmarks for each of the quality measures.

Scenario 3

Your organization is looking to reduce the incidents of diabetes-related complications among its patients. There is a planned intervention to target the patients most at risk for diabetes-related complications with a new educational campaign that aims at improving awareness of their level of risk. The campaign will also work to enroll patients in programs that pertain to their individual risks (e.g., smoking cessation class for smokers).

Use the DIKW paradigm to show how this can be accomplished. Beginning with data, determine what data will need to be collected to identify the patients who have a diagnosis of diabetes and who are most at risk of suffering a diabetes-related complication.

Explain how the raw data can be transformed into information and that information into knowledge and then into wisdom. How will this support decision-making regarding who will be targeted with the intervention and the types of programs that will address their particular risk factor?

Include a minimum of 3 professional references to support your work. (If your deliverable is a podcast, attach a document file with your references.)