Quick Finds: Quality Improvement

Diabetes Continuous Quality Improvement: MCN Webinar (English) (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Diabetes management continues to be a focus of health center quality improvement efforts, especially for those who are serving special populations with unique needs, such as Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers (MSAWs). More Details...

Quality Assessment / Quality Improvement Tool (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This Quality Assessment/Quality Improvement (QA/QI) tool is intended to provide community health centers with guiding questions to assess quality of care related to promotion of healthy relationships and intervention related to intimate partner violence (IPV), human trafficking (HT), and exploitation (E) within their health care delivery. The information is to be used as a benchmark for each health center to engage in ongoing quality improvement efforts. More Details...

Increasing Capacity to Address Health, Justice, & Equity Through Partnerships: A Guide to Help Health Centers, Domestic Violence Programs, & Civil Legal Aid Organizations Address & Prevent Intimate Partner Violence, Human Trafficking, & Exploitation (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Supporting the millions of survivors of domestic/intimate partner violence (IPV), human trafficking (HT), and exploitation (E), requires an intentional and immediate shift away from professional silos and towards multidisclipinary, collaborative health, justice, and equity approaches. Through partnerships, health centers, domestic violence (DV) programs or agencies, and civil legal aid organizations can more effectively leverage their respective skill sets to close access gaps by addressing survivors’ myriad health and social needs, eliminate the risk factors through prevention programs, and improve overall outcomes for individuals and communities. Given their disproportionate share of patients or clients who are survivors, this guide provides select tools and resources for the following key partners and allies: HEALTH CENTERS | To promote collaboration with DV programs and civil legal aid organizations, and help establish medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) DV PROGRAMS | To promote collaboration with HCs/civil legal programs CIVIL LEGAL AID ORGANIZATIONS | To promote collaboration with HCs/DV programs/establish MLPs ESTABLISHED MLPS | To promote DV/HT/E as issues they can address, intersectional with other I-HELP areas of work More Details...

Using Health IT and EHRs to Address the Burden Providers Experience: Takeaways for primary care safety net settings including federally qualified health centers and look-alikes. June 2022. (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Providers are burnt out and most expect it to get worse. Burnout is typically defined as a psychological response to job stressors characterized by emotional exhaustion, detachment, and a sense of ineffectiveness. Investigations of burnout in primary care have usually focused on factors associated with burnout among individual clinicians. But, it may be more useful to think about organizational-level burnout, which can shift the focus from individual responsibility to organizational solutions. More Details...

Tips to Help Health Centers Address Disability & Chronic Disease Discrimination (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This tip sheet provides advice as well as key resources to help staff of health centers and look-alike programs quickly improve their understanding of the important role they can play in helping to identify discrimination at its earliest stages and how to mitigate it by leveraging their own medical authority and resources within the community. More Details...

Quality Management and Patient-centered Medical Home for Clinical Leaders & their Care Teams: A System-based Approach (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: This webinar will feature two of the national organizations offering PCMH Recognition/Accreditation. The Joint Commission’s (TJC) Primary Care Medical Home (PCMH) program will discuss strategies and tools that support QI. Faculty from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) will describe why accessible, team-based primary care practices that understand both their patients’ medical/behavioral needs and their life challenges can conduct more thorough analyses of key performance data and make more informed choices on how and when to intervene to make improvements. More Details...

Bright Spots in HIV Screening: Health center examples, developed June 2022 (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: Since 2020, health centers have reported the HIV Screening clinical quality measure on Table 6B of the UDS. This measures the portion of medical patients aged 15 through 65 who have at least one HIV test recorded between their 15th and 66th birthday. HITEQ hosted discussions with health centers in fall of 2021 to find out how they have made progress on this particular clinical quality measure. More Details...

Impact of COVID-19 On Public Housing Primary Care (PHPC) Health Center Patients and Operations (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This publication by NCHPH highlights findings from a survey distributed to public housing residents assessing the effects that COVID-19 has had on Public Housing Primary Care (PHPC) patients and health center operations. More Details...

How Health Centers Can Promote Benefits of Exercise to Diabetic Public Housing Residents and Promising Practices (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This publication by NCHPH discusses the importance of exercise among public housing patients with diabetes, in addition to how it can benefit them. More Details...

Healthy Together: A Toolkit for Health Center Collaborations with HUD Assisted Housing and Community-Based Organizations (2022). Resource Type: Toolkit. Description: This toolkit by NCHPH and NNCC provides information and resources for health center staff to partner and collaborate more effectively with their local housing authorities and with other providers serving residents of public housing and other low-income housing. More Details...

Using SDOH Data to Screen for Social Vulnerability (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: NCHPH, JSI, and HITEQ hosted a webinar that discussed how health centers can access and use available SDOH data sources to determine and screen the social vulnerability of their patients and link them to appropriate care and services. More Details...

The Impact of Health Literacy on Diabetes (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This blog by NCHPH explains how health literacy can affect persons living with diabetes in addition to its benefits. More Details...

The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Health Center Workforce: Challenges and Solutions (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Despite increasing demand for health care services, health centers indicate a critical shortage of staff necessary to meet that demand. Burnout, stress, depression, etc. have eroded our healthy workforce. This Facebook Live session discussed workforce challenges and how to navigate these challenges. More Details...

Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) Screening Tools 101 for Health Center Staff Serving Public Housing Residents (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: NCHPH convened a webinar that discussed the importance of screening for social determinants of health (SDOH) More Details...

SDOH Academy Innovations Showcase Kickoff Webinar (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: In this webinar, health centers were provided the opportunity to demonstrate the work that they have been doing to address Social Determinants of Health. More Details...

Implementing Screening of People with Disabilities and Functional Needs During Disasters (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: This learning collaborative is designed to help health centers work with people with disabilities to create customized emergency preparedness kits and plans. More Details...

COVID-19 Vaccine Resource Guide (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This publication provides a compilation of COVID-19 vaccine activities conducted by NCHPH. More Details...

Collection of Promising Practices on Health Center and Housing Partnerships (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: NCHPH has catalogued promising practices on health center and housing partnerships that were identified during T/TA activities. More Details...

Addressing Barriers to Diabetes Management for Residents of Public Housing (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: This Facebook Live session reviewed behavioral interventions that incorporate promising practices for public housing residents to manage diabetes and its complications. More Details...

A New Normal: Learning to Live with COVID (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: In this Facebook live session, we discussed what a health center is doing to adapt to an endemic COVID-19 era. This session included infection control approaches, outreach, on-site and virtual visits, and strategies to improve primary health services. More Details...

Quality Improvement Strategies for LTBI Screening, Testing, and Treatment in AA and NH/PI-serving Health Centers: EHR Template Development Learning Collaborative – June 2022 (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: The Tuberculosis Elimination Alliance held a learning collaborative, funded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the Health Resources & Services Administration, in February 2022. In the learning collaborative, health center clinicians and/or enabling services providers explore quality improvement strategies for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) screening, testing, and treatment on electronic health record (EHR) template development. The learning collaborative goals included the development EHR templates, education on the 12-dose regimen, guidance on TB as a national clinical quality measure, and training for clinical and enabling services providers who focus on LTBI screening, testing, and treatment. More Details...

National Health Center Training and Technical Assistance Needs Assessment (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This report summarizes the key findings of the national training and technical assistance needs assessment fielded to all health centers August-October 2021. Response rate was 36% of all health centers and close to 1500 individual staff responses. More Details...

Screening for Broadband Access and Digital Health Literacy in Public Housing Patients (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: In this webinar, we described the importance of screening digital health literacy and broadband access; listed potential screening tools; and highlighted a health center that is screening for these issues. More Details...

Building Partnerships to Address Food Insecurity (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: The lack of access to socially acceptable means for acquiring healthy foods can lead to individuals and families making tradeoffs that harm their well-being. Screening for food insecurity is a starting point to identifying patient/community needs, but effective partnership plans for support health care providers need ways to promptly connect patients with access to healthy food. This webinar will discuss how health centers can further support or modify current infrastructure to make connections to referral systems that support patient/community abilities to purchase healthy food. More Details...

Addressing Health Care Challenges for Migrant Farmworkers (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Today in the Golden State, farmworkers encounter numerous risks to their health and increased barriers to care before, during, and after migration. Health centers play a crucial role in addressing disparities in accessing COVID-19 services, education, and resources in special and vulnerable communities. Health centers that serve migrant farmworker and their families face unique challenges. Mobility results in poor continuity of care, and the health issues that fact migrant farmworkers and other mobile underserved populations are often magnified or compounded by their migratory lifestyle. In this webinar, we provide examples, tools, and best practices to help health centers better integrate health center teams (e.g., providers and community health workers) and external partnerships (e.g., community-based organizations and local government). More Details...

Improving Health of Public Housing Residents Through Intentional Health Center and Housing Authority Partnerships (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: In collaboration with the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium, the National Center for Health in Public Housing conducted a webinar highlighting the health center and housing authority partnerships that have led to improved health for public housing residents. More Details...

Building Partnerships to Address Housing Insecurity (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to focus on different patients’ demographics that have been disproportionately affected by the virus. Additionally, the public health emergency interrupted capacity building health centers have been developing for patient-centered services to different special populations. This webinar will discuss how health centers can further support or modify current infrastructure to meet the needs of the patients experiencing homelessness (PEH) or in public housing, for COVID-19 care and beyond. More Details...

Leading with Optimism in Challenging Times (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Based on the works of positive psychology researcher, Shawn Achor and taught in Harvard’s famed happiness course and to companies worldwide, The Happiness Advantage provides a sustainable approach to increasing optimism and resilience, reducing stress, and enhancing productivity at the individual, team, and organization level. More Details...

Providing Diabetes Control Education and Management: Guide for Community Health Workers (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This resource provides educational prevention tools that Community Health Workers (CHWs) can use and share with Migrant Seasonal Agricultural Workers and other vulnerable populations to reduce diabetic health complications. There are several downloadable resources available to guide CHWs on risk factors and prevention methods in oral, eye, and foot health complications, which are commonly linked to diabetes. More Details...

Billing, Coding, Documentation & Quality Series, Part II: Treating Substance/Opioid Use Disorders via Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) in Community Health (2022). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: This webinar from 1/27/22 outlines the steps needed to effectively document, code, and bill for services including screening for SUD/OUD and providing care during the induction, stabilization, and maintenance phases of MAT. Individual state Medicaid issues are too numerous and will not be specifically referred to on a state-by-state basis. More Details...

Billing, Coding, Documentation & Quality Series, Part I: Top 10 Documentation and Revenue Tips in Community Health (2022). Resource Type: Archived webinar. Description: This session from 1/20/22 provides a review of opportunities for Community Health Centers to improve clinical documentation, professional coding, and medical billing with a focus on the unique CMS rules and regulations for reporting health services to various insurance entities. Significant attention will be paid to how staff can work together to balance clinical and business goals. Webinar content is presented from the perspective of a CMS-approved federally qualified Health Center with a focus on details found within CMS Claims/Benefits Manuals Chapters 9 and 13. More Details...

Health Care Considerations for Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+ Indigenous Communities (2022). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This publication will guide health centers in providing affirming care and services for Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+ American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) people and readers will explore key concepts, terminology, and the effects of historical trauma. More Details...

Diabetes Resources for Health Centers Serving Special and Vulnerable Populations (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: In this webinar, NCHPH hosted a dynamic introduction to the rich collection of resources on diabetes prevention and management for Health Center Programs. More Details...

The Impact of Health Literacy on Diabetes Mellitus (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: In diabetes, health literacy is related to diabetes knowledge, self-efficacy and self-care behaviors and glycemic control. Health literacy may also provide a better understanding of racial disparities observed in patients with diabetes. This webinar describes the concept of health literacy and its assessment and the evidence of its impact on patients with diabetes and offers suggested methods and tools that may be implemented to improve clinical care.  More Details...

Coordinating HCV and HIV Treatment in Primary Care (2021). Resource Type: Template. Description: HCV and HIV are overlapping epidemics with serious clinical implications for people with HCV and HIV. Health centers are poised to prevent and treat these viral infections by understanding the implications of comorbidity and by creating a welcoming environment for those at risk for or currently diagnosed with one or both diseases. More Details...

Diabetes Prevention for Patients of Color at Community Health Centers Webinar (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: In the “Diabetes Prevention for Patients of Color at Community Health Centers” webinar, AAPCHO and the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium (NNCC) held a 90-minute webinar focused on the unique needs of patients of color in diabetes prevention efforts. More Details...

“Are We Prepared for the Next Emergency?” Webinar Series (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Health Centers are likely to be the first point of contact for those seeking care for injuries, infectious diseases, and other emergency-related illnesses. As first-line responders, health centers are responsible for dealing with health emergency case management. The purpose of this webinar series was to increase awareness and understanding of the need for preparing for new emergencies beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The webinar series provided an overview of best practices and challenges health centers face during emergencies and the role of primary care associations to lead the health centers’ emergency response. More Details...

Integrated EP And Psychosocial Support Forum For HCs (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Please join the California Primary Care Association and Americares for a one-day session where community health centers and other health organizations will share their experiences preparing for and navigating through the global COVID-19 pandemic and to learn from strategies their peers used to support staff mental health while dealing with challenges and obstacles. More Details...

Fundamentals of Comprehensive Care (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Join us as we discuss the core concepts of team-based care and introduce elements of team-based care that builds upon these basics to support your teams in advancing their capability to provide satisfying and effective care to complex patient populations. We are joined by Margaret Flinter, Senior Vice President/Clinical Director for Community Health Center, Inc., and both Thomas Bodenheimer, MD, Physician and Founding Director, and Rachel Willard Grace, Director, from the Center for Excellence in Primary Care. More Details...

La Esperanza Winter 2022 Edition: Emerging Issues Among MSAW Populations: A Holistic Approach to Mental Health Resources for Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers (2021). Resource Type: Publication. Description: MHP Salud develops and distributes two issues of La Esperanza, a newsletter for Community HealthWorkers/Promotores and program staff that fosters continuing education and sharing of resources to all potential and existing Health Centers. The topics for this newsletter will include the role of CHWs in addressing emerging health issues experienced by Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers. More Details...

Addressing Tobacco Dependency to Reduce COVID-19 Risks and Complications Webinar Series (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Smoking is a major risk factor for most respiratory related infections. The early evidence in this area found that compared with non-smokers, smokers are more likely to develop serious COVID-19 disease. Recent studies also show that current smokers have been more likely to access various forms of smoking cessation assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This offers an opportunity for Health Centers to offer smoking cessation services, referrals, and in-house psychological and pharmacological interventions. These two webinars provided examples of cessation plans and resources that can be shared with patients trying to stop smoking. More Details...

Building Value and Return on Investment in Housing and Health Partnerships Learning Collaborative (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: This learning collaborative from NCHPH and National Nurse-Led Care Consortium (NNCC) will guide health center staff through practical steps to help build value and return on investment in their current health center and housing authority partnerships. More Details...

Donut Stress Just Test: (HIV, HCV, and STI Screening Campaign) (2021). Resource Type: Patient Material. Description: Patient and Care Team campaign to promote opt-out HIV, HCV, and STI screenings. More Details...

Engaging the Families of Transgender and Gender Diverse Children (2021). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This publication engages pediatric primary care providers, mental health providers, health center administrators and support staff in learning how to actively engage families in the support of their transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) children, with the aim of improving the health outcomes for TGD youth. More Details...

How Health Center Care Teams Can Address Health and Housing for Patients Involved With the Justice System (2021). Resource Type: Publication. Description: This issue brief aims to provide an overview of both the civil and criminal justice systems in the United States. It also describes the cyclical relationship between those systems and housing insecurity (including homelessness). Based on this foundation, the brief outlines potential workflow considerations for health centers working to reduce health disparities for patients and families. More Details...

Understanding and Applying SDOH Screening Data to Address Barriers to Health: Webinar (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: Health centers provide high-quality primary and preventive care to diverse populations in special and vulnerable populations in underserved communities. Health centers also provide a host of enabling services – non-clinical services that aim to increase access to health care and improve population health outcomes. The ability to track and evaluate these services is an important tool for health centers to demonstrate their value in addressing patients’ social determinants of health; of equal importance is the ability to make this data actionable in order to address patients’ barriers to access. More Details...

Centering the Nurse Home Visitor Client Experience During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2021). Resource Type: Archived Webinar. Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has upended virtually every facet of life. By necessity, healthcare organizations have limited or restricted in-person care to reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Unfortunately, this has kept many consumers from accessing timely healthcare. More Details...

Addressing Social Determinants of Health to Improve Diabetes Outcomes (2021). Resource Type: Publication. Description: In this blog, NCHPH discusses how various social determinants of health can affect persons living with diabetes, in addition to best practices taken to address these social determinants of health. More Details...

Clinician Wellbeing Toolkit (2021). Resource Type: Toolkit. Description: Health providers facing overwork or increased or prolonged stress due to aspects of their work environment and daily tasks may physically or mentally deteriorate and provide inadequate care for their patients. More Details...

What to Expect When Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine (2021). Resource Type: Toolkit. Description: Image-centric, editable vaccine resources in multiple languages help you reach refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities with important information regarding getting a vaccine as well as safety measures to take after being vaccinated. More Details...