We are upgrading the repository! A content freeze is in effect until December 6, 2024. New submissions or changes to existing items will not be allowed during this period. All content already published will remain publicly available for searching and downloading. Updates will be posted in the Website Upgrade 2024 FAQ in the sidebar Help menu. Reach out to escholarship@umassmed.edu with any questions.
Virtual Patient Technology: Engaging Primary Care in Quality Improvement Innovations
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Medicine, Division of Preventative and Behavioral MedicineTan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing
Department of Quantitative Health Sciences
Document Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2017-02-15Keywords
virtual patientsinterdisciplinary health teams
clinical staff engagement
environment design
health promotion
tobacco use cessation
UMCCTS funding
Health Information Technology
Health Services Administration
Health Services Research
Primary Care
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
BACKGROUND: Engaging health care staff in new quality improvement programs is challenging. OBJECTIVE: We developed 2 virtual patient (VP) avatars in the context of a clinic-level quality improvement program. We sought to determine differences in preferences for VPs and the perceived influence of interacting with the VP on clinical staff engagement with the quality improvement program. METHODS: Using a participatory design approach, we developed an older male smoker VP and a younger female smoker VP. The older male smoker was described as a patient with cardiovascular disease and was ethnically ambiguous. The female patient was younger and was worried about the impact of smoking on her pregnancy. Clinical staff were allowed to choose the VP they preferred, and the more they engaged with the VP, the more likely the VP was to quit smoking and become healthier. We deployed the VP within the context of a quality improvement program designed to encourage clinical staff to refer their patients who smoke to a patient-centered Web-assisted tobacco intervention. To evaluate the VPs, we used quantitative analyses using multivariate models of provider and practice characteristics and VP characteristic preference and analyses of a brief survey of positive deviants (clinical staff in practices with high rates of encouraging patients to use the quit smoking innovation). RESULTS: A total of 146 clinical staff from 76 primary care practices interacted with the VPs. Clinic staff included medical providers (35/146, 24.0%), nurse professionals (19/146, 13.0%), primary care technicians (5/146, 3.4%), managerial staff (67/146, 45.9%), and receptionists (20/146, 13.7%). Medical staff were mostly male, and other roles were mostly female. Medical providers (OR 0.031; CI 0.003-0.281; P=.002) and younger staff (OR 0.411; CI 0.177-0.952; P=.038) were less likely to choose the younger, female VP when controlling for all other characteristics. VP preference did not influence online patient referrals by staff. In high-performing practices that referred 20 or more smokers to the ePortal (13/76), the majority of clinic staff were motivated by or liked the virtual patient (20/26, 77%). CONCLUSIONS: Medical providers are more likely motivated by VPs that are similar to their patient population, while nurses and other staff may prefer avatars that are more similar to them.Source
JMIR Med Educ. 2017 Feb 15;3(1):e3. doi: 10.2196/mededu.7042. Link to article on publisher's site
DOI
10.2196/mededu.7042Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/29117PubMed ID
28202429Related Resources
Rights
Copyright © Amanda C Blok, Christine N May, Rajani S Sadasivam, Thomas K Houston. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Education, is properly cited.ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.2196/mededu.7042
Scopus Count
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
A Public Health Framework for the State Mental Health Authority: A Call for Action by Massachusetts Consumers and Family MembersDelman, Jonathan (2006-01-01)During the Spring of 2006, Consumer Quality Initiatives (CQI) conducted 20 focus groups across the state, 12 with adults with mental illness, 3 with parents of youth with serious emotional disorder, 2 with youth with SED, 1 with family members of adult consumers, and 2 with youth in transition. Supported by a contract with Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH), the goal was to assist DMH in framing the criteria for its upcoming reprocurement. Our findings reveal a frustration with an approach to health care delivery that focuses primarily on the provision of psychiatric care (egs, medication, therapy, hospitalization). We reviewed the focus group reports to identify the most significant themes, which clustered within eight broad categories.
-
Policy Brief: Addressing Social Determinants of Health through Community Health Workers: A Call to ActionLondon, Katharine; Damio, Grace; Ferrazo, Meredith; Perez-Escamalla, Rafael; Wiggins, Noelle (2018-01-30)This technical report was compiled by the Hispanic Health Council in partnership with Southwestern AHEC and a panel of Community Health Worker Policy Research Experts which included our Katharine London from the Center for Health Law and Economics. The report offers a number of policy recommendations for community health workers for communities that might benefit from community-based services. The report offers recommendations on; payment of community health workers; community health worker caseloads; community health worker recruitment; community health worker training; reflective and trauma-informed mentoring and supportive supervision of community health workers; integration of community health workers into care teams; documenting the effect of community heal worker services on social determination of health. The Hispanic Health Council believes a service design that effectively supports community health workers would incorporate the seven areas of policy recommendation included in this report.
-
Making the Case for Sustainable Funding for Community Health Worker Services: Talking to Payers and ProvidersLondon, Katharine (2018-01-27)In this presentation, Katharine London of the Center for Health Law and Economics makes her case for offering sustainable funding for community health worker services. Research has shown community health workers can have a distinct impact on health systems, helping them improve population health and contain costs, while also promoting health equity and community engagement. This presentation was designed to assist CHWs and other advocates in engaging with policymakers and payers to support CHW sustainability and develop a financial plan for their CHW work. It was presented as part of a CHW Sustainability event held at the Families USA’s annual conference, Health Action 2018: Staying Strong for America’s Families, in Washington, DC. See Katharine London's blog post on payment delivery methods for community health workers here.