Transforming Health Care Through Quality Improvement.
The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ) works closely with its members and stakeholders on collaborative projects to ensure better patient outcomes, improve system performance, and make care more affordable. It starts with collecting data and using that information to identify the process or system that can be improved.
With member input, WCHQ organizes its improvement work into topic-specific areas and creates an Improvement Team for each comprised of members and select stakeholders.
To learn more or to join a team, contact info@wchq.org.
The Improvement Teams
WCHQ facilitates collaborative learning teams, with provider members, focused on improving a specific health topic. WCHQ staff uses group learning and collective impact methods to support members’ practice transformation goals and drive improvement across the state. All members are welcome to participate on any of the teams and members can participate on multiple improvement teams. Participants benefit from networking with peers, hearing from subject matter experts, and rapid-cycle improvement work. Teams typically meet monthly with virtual participation available. Teams are currently in place on the following topics:
Behavioral Health: WCHQ is supporting members' efforts to integrate behavioral health into primary care, increase depression screening rates, and related topics.
Team-Based Care: This learning collaborative meets with experts to learn and share best practices and interventions that are proven to improve care for patients with chronic disease, particularly diabetes and hypertension. Designing and implementing team-based care for those patients with chronic disease is integral to this work.
Chronic Kidney Disease: The CKD Advisory Group supports efforts to identify CKD earlier and treat it sooner for patients who are diabetic or have hypertension.
Disparities: WCHQ is leading a statewide initiative to identify and reduce disparities statewide. Health systems, in collaboration with payers and stakeholders committed to eliminating health care disparities, will work in partnership with urban and rural communities to ensure the health needs of all people are met.
Maternal and Child Health: WCHQ is extending its considerable expertise in disparities to specifically improve on topics related to maternal morbidity and mortality, and adolescent and child immunizations and well visits.
Obesity: WCHQ has developed new initiative aimed at improving care for individuals living with obesity. This multi-year project is focused on sharing education, best practices and interventions with providers, employers and insurers. This team has developed several quality measures, with provider input, that support members in their efforts to improve care for this patient population.
Asthma: WCHQ collects data on the ACT asthma control test and has developed a new project aimed at developing novel interventions to drive asthma improvement across the membership.
Antibiotic Stewardship: WCHQ has developed antibiotic stewardship measures designed to promote best practices in prescribing antibiotics for upper respiratory infections, acute sinusitis and bronchitis. An improvement group will begin meeting in late 2022 to start this work.
Statewide Improvement Priorities for 2022
The WCHQ 2022 improvement priorities are: behavioral health, colorectal cancer screening, chronic disease management, and adolescent and child health. In addition, WCHQ will direct resources to increasing immunization rates as members are concerned about the dramatic decline in the administration of life-saving vaccines. Improvement work related to oral health and health disparities will also be supported. These broad strategies for improvement cross many clinical priorities.
WCHQ’s priorities represent the clinical improvement topics of highest importance to its members and will be supported by WCHQ staff, broadly promoted and regularly monitored.
To learn more or join an improvement team, contact info@wchq.org.
