BALTIMORE, MD—Med-IQ, an award-winning, ACCME-accredited provider of continuing medical education (CME), is pleased to announce that 2 quality improvement initiatives were recently recognized with Best in Class Outcomes awards by the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Health Professions (ACEhp). This award is granted to high-quality outcome-based projects effectively reporting the measured impact of educational initiatives that have successfully identified and addressed practice gaps and resulted in improvements in patient care or in the knowledge, competency, or behavior of healthcare providers.

Projects will be presented as posters during the Annual Alliance Industry Summit, May 22 to 24, in Philadelphia, PA.

Aligning Clinical Practice to Changing Guidelines: Technology Alone is Not the Answer is a collaboration between Med-IQ, the Duke University Health System Department of Clinical Education and Professional Development, and the Virginia Mason Healthcare System. The program evaluated hepatitis C virus (HCV) testing rates in alignment with birth cohort guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, and others, as well as patterns of referral to specialty care for patients with newly identified HCV infection. This initiative focused on primary care sites within the Virginia Mason Healthcare System. The collaborators demonstrated improvements in care that were greater among sites who received focused, data-driven, responsive education than in sites who did not have access to these interventions (but did have a system-wide electronic health record reminder for HCV testing). The results of this program demonstrate that, in today’s complex and busy clinical practice, changes to better align with updated evidence-based practice guidelines occur more frequently when electronic reminders are paired with focused education and opportunities for clinicians to evaluate and respond to current practice patterns. This initiative was supported by an educational grant from Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Strategies for Reducing Outcomes Disparities in the Acute Management of Ischemic Stroke in the Southeastern US: A Targeted Educational Initiative for Emergency Department Care Teams, sought to help emergency department clinicians improve the identification of patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and ensure that patients receive timely and appropriate treatment. The project recruited 5 small, rural hospitals in the Stroke Belt region of the United States, where stroke death rates are approximately 10% higher than in the rest of the country. Through targeted, live education that incorporated local performance data and was supported by online reinforcement tools, this initiative demonstrated improvements in alignment with guideline-recommended delivery of critical AIS treatments. Over the course of a 6-month period, data from this initiative revealed significant increases in the percentage of patients arriving in the emergency department who were appropriately triaged and provided therapy within the evidence-based, guideline-recommended span of 60 minutes. These changes in clinical process are critical for addressing the substantial disparity in stroke mortality observed in this region of the county. This initiative was supported by an educational grant from Genentech.

Med-IQ remains committed to building educational partnerships with healthcare organizations to drive quality improvement. We’re honored to have our efforts recognized by the Alliance and look forward to sharing our successes, as well as the lessons learned, with the medical education community,”

said Jason J. Olivieri, MPH, Director of Outcomes at Med-IQ.

With the addition of these awards, Med-IQ has now received a total of 27 awards from the ACEhp, making Med-IQ one of the most award-winning accredited CME providers in the nation.

About Med-IQ

Med-IQ, America’s most respected provider of continuing medical education (CME), inspires healthcare professionals through award-winning activities that deliver sophisticated outcomes-based educational designs with measurable results. Med-IQ is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the California Board of Registered Nursing (CBRN), and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE). See how Med-IQ is helping to enhance patient outcomes in these short videos.

The Med-IQ Quality Improvement (QI) Institute supports the ongoing transformation of the healthcare system from a volume- to value-focused model, aiming to provide personalized, patient-centered, evidence-based, and efficient care. The QI Institute has won 6 awards for its initiatives, given 15 presentations at national conferences, been published 18 times in peer-reviewed journals, and worked with more than 50 healthcare systems. To date, more than 71,000 patient records have been reviewed as part of Med-IQ QI initiatives.

To learn more about Med-IQ, visit www.Med-IQ.com, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and connect with us on LinkedIn.

For more information, contact:

Sara C. Miller, MS
Director, QI Institute, CE Strategy and Content
866 858 7434
info@med-iq.com

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Inspiring Medical Education.