E-QIPS (Engage with Quality Improvement and Patient Safety)
Engage with Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, or E-QIPS, is a repository of projects describing quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) work from members of the urological community. The goals of E-QIPS are to showcase members’ QIPS accomplishments, foster knowledge and understanding of improvement science, encourage collaboration, and elevate urological care more broadly.
Each E-QIPS report, whether a guide or work-in-progress, concisely outlines a specific quality or safety problem of interest, project objectives, the intervention(s) employed, and overall methodology. Guides further provide project outcomes, potential impact and scalability, and information on how improvements can be sustained.
We invite any member of the urological community (physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses, researchers, patient advocacy groups, etc.) to showcase their QIPS initiatives and to learn from the experiences of others.
Steps to Success: Improving Advanced Prostate Cancer Patient Management and Care Coordination Toolkit
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed solid organ malignancy for men in the United States and remains the second leading cause of cancer deaths for this population. Clinical advancement through the advent of combination therapies has resulted in a renaissance in the entire landscape for clinicians caring for men with advanced prostate cancer (APC). While offering significant survival benefits, such therapeutic development also renders clinical decision-making and the treatment environment itself increasingly complicated.
It is with such considerations in place that the American Urological Association (AUA) collaborated with Pfizer Oncology in a process improvement project to study APC patient management and identify key practices to improve patient care coordination. AUA and Pfizer Oncology jointly developed and fielded a survey of healthcare providers to assess current practice patterns in various settings and to identify best practices around care of APC patients. Survey queries touched on areas including demographics, patient monitoring, practice management, and quality and data/analytics.
There is no one-size-fits-all model for every program, but the Steps to Success Toolkit may serve as a valuable roadmap for others who are thinking about implementing an APC program or looking for guidance on how to improve the care of their patients.
Other Resources
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Challenges and Opportunities for Stewardship of Urological Imaging (2017)
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Infection Complications of Transrectal Prostate Needle Biopsy (2014)
Webinar
The AUA Quality Improvement Webinar provides participants with the leading techniques to improve quality of care in your practice. This session was hosted by Stephen Davidow, MBA-HCM, CPHQ, APR, who is an expert in quality improvement and the Quality Improvement Program Manager at The Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement® (PCPI).
This webinar explains:
- Why process improvement is important to clinicians
- Lean Management
- Six Sigma
- The Model for Improvement (Plan, Do, Study, Act).
For help with understanding the technical language in the webinar, access the following resource:
- A Guide to the Jargon [pdf]