In the last several years, quality improvement resources and activities have improved dramatically. Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, a report issues by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2001, described the current gaps in care and put forth six aims for improving America's health care system, namely that health care should be safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, and patient-centered. The Chasm report also recommended that a set of priority conditions be established to guide improvement efforts. In 2005, CAFP embarked on its own quality improvement activity, New Directions in Diabetes Care, assisting members in practices of one to eight physicians in redesigning their practices, embracing many of the tenants of the AAFP's Future of Family Medicine Report. Below, we have provided a range of resources to assist members addressing quality improvement in their practice.

Quality Tools

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - AHRQ's clearinghouse for practical, ready-to-use tools for measuring and improving the quality of health care.

Institute for Healthcare Improvement - Provides disease-specific measures, forms used in office redesign, change packages, and other "improvement" materials.

Bureau of Primary Healthcare - Quality tools organized around the improvement aims described in the IOM Chasm report.

Commonwealth Fund DVD - "Putting Quality into Practice: Physicians in Their Own Voices," features the perspectives of physicians who have adopted quality measurement and improvement tools.

The National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality has a Child and Adolescent Healthcare Quality Improvement ListServ. To register, scroll to the bottom of their homepage.

Chronic Disease Management

Improving Chronic Illness Care - Chronic disease management and quality improvement clinical tools and education, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

California HealthCare Foundation - Resources focused on the role of technology in chronic disease management, tools for patient self-management, and quality improvement.

Making Systems Change for Better Diabetes Care - Information, models, links, resources, and tools to help health care professionals.

Patient Safety

Ambulatory Patient Safety Toolkit - Assessment tools and project summaries were developed to help medical providers evaluate their offices' practices in identified structural and process measures that relate to patient safety.

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality - Tips, fact sheets, newsletters, and disease-specific materials addressing medical errors and closing the quality gap.

National Quality Forum - Consensus standards, safe practices in health care, and other projects are undertaken by NQF.

Measures

National Committee on Quality Assurance - The Diabetes Physician Recognition Program awards physicians who demonstrate that they provide high quality care to patients with diabetes. NCQA also provides a range of measures related to chronic disease.

Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance - Performance measures to be used a "starter set" for developing measures for ambulatory care.

Lumetra - The Quality Improvement Organization for California offers a variety of materials to physicians, including their Physician Office Quality Measures.

National Voluntary Consensus Standards for Ambulatory Care - 42 NQF-endorsed consensus standards for ambulatory care, representing an initial set of ambulatory care voluntary consensus standards.