Factors That Affect Opioid Quality Improvement Initiatives in Primary Care: Insights from Ten Health Systems.

Objective: To improve patient safety and pain management, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (CDC Guideline). Recognizing that issuing a guideline alone is insufficient for transforming practice, CDC supported an Opioid Quality Improvement (QI) Collaborative, consisting of 10 health care systems that represented more than 120 practices across the United States. The research team identified factors related to implementation success using domains described by the integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (iPARIHS) implementation science framework.

Moving from Quality Measurement to Quality Improvement: Applying Meaningful Use Lessons to the Quality Payment Program.

Although the federal electronic health record (EHR) incentive program has ended, the need to effectively implement and use EHRs has not. The advent of the federal Quality Payment Program (QPP) has made effective use of EHRs more critical than ever, especially for clinical quality measurement and improvement. However, practices continue to face challenges in successfully implementing and using EHRs to achieve these aims.

Medicaid Accountable Care Organizations in Four States: Implementation and Early Impacts.

Unlabelled: Policy Points Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Vermont leveraged State Innovation Model awards to implement Medicaid accountable care organizations (ACOs). Flexibility in model design, ability to build on existing reforms, provision of technical assistance to providers, and access to feedback data all facilitated ACO development. Challenges included sustainability of transformation efforts and the integration of health care and social service providers.