Real Outcomes: Colorado Permanente Medical Group
CME Provider: Colorado Permanente Medical Group
Location: Denver, Colorado
Staff Spotlight: Sharisse M. Arnold Rehring, MD, Director of Medical Education
“Seeing our outcomes research confirm that accredited CE paired with system-level changes can transform clinician behavior and improve patient care is incredibly rewarding—it reminds us that education truly has the power to transform healthcare.”
Improving Performance
Colorado Permanente Medical Group (CPMG) demonstrates how accredited continuing medical education (CME) and electronic health record (EHR) tools can lead to real improvements in patient care. The Department of Education at CPMG, in partnership with the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, observed a clear practice gap in outpatient care for urinary tract infections (UTIs) in children. Treatments for pediatric UTIs varied widely. Some children received unnecessarily broad antibiotics or longer courses of treatment than necessary.
In response, CPMG sought to improve antibiotic prescribing practices within outpatient settings. They collaborated with the Children’s Hospital of Colorado to offer new clinical practice guidelines and a live case-based CME session for clinicians at all 27 outpatient clinics. A new UTI-specific order set was created within electronic health records, from which clinicians could order guideline-recommended antibiotics for patients.
Their CME interventions led to shorter, more appropriate courses of treatment. After 18 months:
- Treatment using their recommended first-line (narrow spectrum) antibiotics increased from 43% before the intervention to 62% after.
- The duration of antibiotic treatment decreased from 7.3 days to 6.0 days.
- Among older children with uncomplicated infections, the proportion receiving short courses of treatment of five days or less increased from 26% to nearly 69%.
As Sharisse M. Arnold Rehring, MD, Director of Medical Education observes, “Seeing our outcomes research confirm that accredited CE paired with system-level changes can transform clinician behavior and improve patient care is incredibly rewarding—it reminds us that education truly has the power to transform healthcare.”
As detailed in the published manuscript in Pediatrics, antibiotic choices among participating clinicians greatly improved, with children more often receiving first-line, narrow spectrum antibiotics instead of second-line, broad spectrum antibiotics that target a wider range of bacteria.
