Implmenting a provider education program
Order Description
The sample for this process improvement project was 10 volunteer Primary Care Providers (PCPs) who provide care to veterans diagnosed with congestive heart failure (CHF) and other chronic diagnosis. These PCPs communicated a lack of knowledge regarding the telehealth program and demonstrated a need to increase the number of referrals entered. Patients with CHF tend to get readmitted within 30 days and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will no longer pay. The implementation of a provider educational program allowed for one on one education to be provided and questions answered to reduce possible barriers to resistance.
The question “Does implementing a provider education program for CHF and home telehealth (HT) increase consult numbers over a 4 week period?” will be answered and data analyzed for results. The pre/posttest design was selected due to the type of data that was being collected and the types of variables being compared to gather results. The quantitative technique was used and illustrated with tabular demonstration of random sampling of consult entries pre and post the educational program implementation.The 10 PCPs who participated in the project were all full time employees at this regional VAMC serving a population of chronically ill veterans in rural and local areas with an outpatient status. Five of the participants were female in gender and the other five were male.
*This section, which is the primary section of this chapter, presents a summary and analysis of the data in a non-evaluative, unbiased, organized manner that relates to the clinical question(s). List the clinical question(s) as you are discussing them in order to ensure that the readers see that the question has been addressed. Answer the clinical question(s) in the order that they are listed for quantitative studies. You can organize your data in several different ways for qualitative studies including: by clinical question, by chronology of variables, by themes and patterns, or by other approaches deemed appropriate for the project.
The key components included in this section are:
• The data and the analysis of that data should be presented in a narrative, non-evaluative, unbiased, organized manner by clinical question(s).
• The section should also include appropriate graphic organizers, such as tables, charts, graphs, and figures.
• The amount and quality of the data or information is sufficient to answer the clinical question(s) is well presented, and is intelligently interpreted.
• Quantitative: Findings are presented by clinical question using section titles. They are presented in order of significance, if appropriate.
• Quantitative: Results of each statistical test are presented in appropriate statistical format with tables, graphs, and charts.
• Quantitative: For inferential statistics, p-value and test statistics are reported.
• Quantitative: Control variables (if part of the design) are reported and discussed. Outliers, if found, were reported.
The results must be presented without implication, speculation, assessment, evaluation, or interpretation. Discussion of results and conclusions are left for Chapter 5. Refer to the APA Style Manual for additional lists and examples. In quantitative practice improvement projects, it is not required for all data analyzed to be presented; however, it is important to provide descriptive statistics and the results of the applicable statistic tests used in conducting the analysis of the data. It is also important that there are descriptive statistics provided on all variables. Nevertheless, it is also acceptable to put most of this in the Appendix if the chapter becomes too lengthy.
Required components include descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics describe or summarize data sets using frequency distributions(e.g., to describe the distribution for the IQ scores in your class of 30 pupils) or graphical displays such as bar graphs (e.g., to display increases in a school district’s budget each year for the past five years), as well as histograms (e.g., to show spending per child in school and display mean, median, modes, and frequencies), line graphs (e.g., to display peak scores for the classroom group), and scatter plots (e.g., to display the relationship between two variables). Descriptive statistics also include numerical indexes such as averages, percentile ranks, measures of central tendency, correlations, measures of variability and standard deviation, and measures of relative standing.
Inferential statistics describe the numerical characteristics of data, and then go beyond the data to make inferences about the population based on the sample data. Inferential statistics also estimate the characteristics of populations and test hypothesis about population parameters using sampling distributions, estimation, or hypothesis testing. Table 2 presents example results of an independent t test comparing Emotional Intelligence (EI) mean scores by gender.
Table 2
t Test for Equality of Emotional Intelligence Mean Scores by Gender
t test for equality of means
t df p
EI 1.908 34 .065
• Greek letters, abbreviations that are not variables and subscripts that function as identifiers use standard typeface, no bolding or italicization
• Use parentheses to enclose statistical values (p = .026) and degrees of freedom t(36) = 3.85 or F(2, 52) = 3.85
• Use brackets to enclose limits of confidence intervals 95% CIs [- 5.25, 4.95]
Make sure to include appropriate graphics to present the results. Always introduce, present, and discuss the visual organizers in narrative form. Never insert a visual organizer without these three steps.
A figure is a graph, chart, map, drawing, or photograph. Below is an example of a figure labeled per APA style. Do not include a figure unless it adds substantively to the understanding of the results or it duplicates other elements in the narrative. If a figure is used, a label must be placed under the figure. As with tables, refer to the figure by number in the narrative preceding the placement of the figure. Make sure a table or figure is not split between pages.