SARAH: Hello, welcome to Wave 2 of the Quality Improvement Hub here at OU-HCOM. We are happy to have you joining us for the next wave of this project. So I have Lori Lammert here with me today. She's really excited to be here. 

LORI: Always, always excited. Sarah, 

SARAH: The first thing I'd like to talk about is just a summary of wave one. So we began the QI hub in around December of 2022. We ran our first, um, PDSAs in around October of 2023. Those PDSAs that we worked on were around CGM, increasing the number of CGMs we had for patients with type 2 diabetes who were adults in the southeast Ohio region. We also worked on some additional projects like SGLT-2, increasing the number of prescriptions of SGLT-2s, did some A1C testing. We did some diabetes navigation and um, we have had really a great success to date in helping patients lower their A1Cs. We actually did show a drop in our A1C numbers in southeast Ohio for our clinics in our first wave. Considered a great success. So Lori, what do you think for Wave 2 might be most important for them to know? 

LORI: Well, first of all, we're so excited to have some new partners on this project, it's really great. Um, we've had over a year of learning now, so, um, lots of great things we've learned about how best to work with our different clinical sites. And I think what we found is that the clinical sites who get the most outta the project, um, do the following things. One of the things they do is take advantage of our subject matter experts. We have a lot of individuals on the team who have a lot of knowledge. Um, Dr. Atkins here is a pharmacist. Great information on medication taking. 

SARAH: Love it. 

LORI: Um, Dr. Beverly, our PI is part of the ADA standards of care group that annually revises the guidelines for those standards of care. Um, we have Dr. Amber Healy who is a diabetologist and just a wealth of information about anything related to patient care and diabetes. So be sure to reach out to us with questions you might have. Things that are coming up in patient care or things you'd like to know more about. Another thing clinical sites can do is take advantage of our educational content team. We provide monthly handouts and videos on, on updates related to diabetes care. 

SARAH: They're also very short, they're very digestible. The, the handouts and the videos are always kept to, um, a minimum. So it's, it fits into your time and you can always listen to them faster if you need to get through them quickly. 

LORI: Yeah. We also are able to come and facilitate the use of different quality improvement tools at your site. So if you're stuck with a problem and you would like to do what we call a little root cause analysis, um, we can facilitate some, some time for your clinical site to do that. Those are some of the things I would really say. We have a great team. We love working with you, you know, so just please let us know what you need. 

SARAH: I think that's awesome. So the three things we want you to take away as a Wave two site, we want you to know that we have knowledgeable experts here that are ready and willing and excited to help you. We have amazing education materials also available on our website and we can facilitate the use of many QI tools. I think some, what we have learned over the last couple years about QI is it's really lovely that you can go slow. You don't have to get things done in a hurry. You can start with one patient. You can start with one provider. You can start with one page of a, of a practice sheet. Like it can go very slow and learn what the best way is for you to, um, change a process. So also what I love is that you can check out the dashboard. 

LORI: Absolutely. 

SARAH: So the dashboard is there. Those all this data that you have provided us goes into that dashboard so you can watch your numbers. It has a lot of data relevant to diabetes. So A1C eye exams, foot exams. That's where we saw our decreasing of A1C on that dashboard. So the dashboard is super cool. Anything you wanna add about the dashboard? Super cool. 

LORI: I don't think so. It's definitely a great resource. Um, and you will get a login from the government resource center, but reach out to me anytime you, you want information on the dashboard, I can send you, um, screenshots or whatever. And tell you how your site is doing. 

SARAH: That's awesome. 

LORI: Yeah. What else? 

SARAH: We also else we have hats. 

LORI: I think our hats are getting a little low, Sarah.

SARAH: Like we don't Have a lot of hats. 

LORI: I think there's only a few left. 

SARAH: Alright. So we, maybe we don't have hats, but we also have mugs. 

LORI: And t-shirts

SARAH: And T-shirts and you know what else? 

LORI: What else? 

SARAH: My Favorite. 

LORI: What's your favorite? 

SARAH: Stickers.

LORI: We have stickers. 

SARAH: They're amazing. 

LORI: They, they're amazing. But it actually is also reinforcing like a QI concept of having visual reminders to complete the work or the process that you're trying to implement. 

SARAH: Lori, is there anything else you think that the wave two sites would really enjoy knowing? 

LORI: Well, you know what else? I think some, um, folks in this project have really learned, enjoyed learning from each other. Uh, so I have tracking sheets of all the projects that are going on and if you're working on continuous glucose monitors and you wanna know how another site is troubleshooting or dealing with a particular issue that's coming up, um, I can help connect the dots on that. I think one of the nice things with the project is it's now community and you all can connect to each other to learn as well. 

SARAH: Absolutely. I definitely feel that the community around this QI hub is really important. Something else that goes along with that is we are very responsive to the asks of our site. So we at the QI hub, the team that you have supporting you, if you have something that you need, that you don't have training around something, we had one of our sites requested information on how to upload information from CGMs. So we pursued that and did a video helping to see what that looked like and giving that to you, um, as a tool. So we are happy to do that. Anytime you need information, we can do it quickly, easily, and we're happy to support you. So we're all in this together. We are here to lower A1Cs in southeast Ohio and we love working with you. So thank you for coming on board with us and we really do look forward to working with you. Please let us know if you need anything. Have a great day.