Evaluating Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Amongst Practicing Urologists: Analysis of the 2018 American Urological Association Census.

Objective: To describe factors associated with Quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) participation using 2018 American Urological Association Census data. QIPS have become increasingly important in medicine. However, studies about QIPS in urology suggest low levels of participation, with little known about factors predicting non-participation.

Methods: Results from 2339 census respondents were weighted to estimate 12,660 practicing urologists in the United States. Our primary outcome was participation in QIPS. Predictor variables included demographics, practice setting, rurality, fellowship training, QIPS domains in practice, years in practice, and non-clinical/clinical workload.

Results: QIPS participants and non-participants significantly differed in distributions of age (P = .0299), gender (P = .0013), practice setting (P <.0001), employment (employee vs partner vs owner vs combination; P <.0001), and fellowship training (P <.0001). QIPS participants reported fewer years in practice (21.3 vs 25.9, P = .018) and higher clinical (45.2 vs 39.2, P = .022) and non-clinical (8.76 vs 5.28, P = .002) work hours per week. Non-participation was associated with male gender (OR = 2.68, 95% CI 1.03-6.95) and Asian race (OR = 2.59, 95% CI 1.27-5.29) for quality programs and private practice settings (ORs = 8.72-27.8) for patient safety initiatives.

Conclusion: QIPS was associated with academic settings. Interventions to increase rates of quality and safety participation should target individual and system-level factors, respectively. Future work should discern barriers to QIPS engagement and its clinical benefits.