Accelerating Implementation of Comparative Effectiveness Findings on Clinical and Delivery Systems by Leveraging AHRQ Networks

There are currently 65 primary care practices within the Carolinas Healthcare System network that have electronic medical record with decision support (EAP)access at baseline. These practices will serve as a second level of control for comparison with the intervention groups. Each of these practices is currently using Cerner PowerChart and at the start of the study and will have access to the asthma decision support tools; an electronically generated Asthma Action Plan (AAP); and a built-in system of population management reports which will be pushed to the practices on an on-going basis to help in patient recall and management. The EAP approach to care has been developed with input from clinicians, hospital administrators, hospital information services personnel, and Cerner consultants.

There are 10 practices within the Carolinas Healthcare System (CHS) network that have already received additional training for improving outcomes for patients with chronic diseases termed the Integrated Approach to Care (IAC). This IAC approach developed by CHS is based on the Chronic Care Model (CCM). The IAC approach includes a heavy emphasis on the use of health information technology that practices receive during the initial EAP rollout.

This approach has great potential for improved patient outcomes and provides an additional step in the successful implementation of patient self-management. The research team will develop the SDM intervention during the first 6 months of the study. In particular, the Shared decision making (SDM) intervention will be designed to be deployed within the 4 large clinics that care for the majority of the community's underserved and disadvantaged patients. The SDM intervention development will be overseen by the study advisory board and actively recruit providers from within the clinics for feedback about the intervention.

Activities included: spending individual time with students to assess, treat, and monitor and to educate students in proper asthma management; facilitate access to health care and medicine; and communicate with parents.

Group A will consist of 20 primary care clinics who are part of the Carolinas Healthcare System network but have not yet adopted the Electronic Medical Record System. These practices do use the same billing databases as the remaining clinics, allowing easy identification of asthma patients and their health services utilization patterns. Data from the billing systems will be used to retrospectively populate a database for these clinics from January 2009 forward.