Primary Care Alchemy: Practice Coaching Turns QI into Dollars

The last time Linda Franke visited practices in the three rural Western New York counties she supports as a practice enhancement associate (PEA) before taking time off on maternity leave, she received not only a fond farewell but also a collective sigh of relief.

The practice leaders said, “We really like you, Linda, and we are happy about your baby, especially because it means that you won’t be visiting us for a while and we can get a bit of a break from all this quality improvement work,” according to Franke.

Before her leave, Franke had been working with practices for over a year, slowly introducing patient-centered medical home (PCMH) certification requirements, improving workflows, and connecting practices with health information technology Regional Extension Centers to help qualify for meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR) incentive payments.

Read the rest of this AF4Q Bright Spot here.

View the entire Illustrating Innovation Through Bright Spots book, produced for the May 2012 National Meeting here.