PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kollipara, Usha
AU  - Rivera-Bernuy, Mario
AU  - Putra, Joseph
AU  - Burks, Jessica
AU  - Meyer, Amber
AU  - Ferguson, Shayla
AU  - Nelson, Carolyn
AU  - Mutz, Jackie
AU  - Mirfakhraee, Sasan
AU  - Bajaj, Puneet
AU  - Kermani, Asra
AU  - Fish, Jason S.
AU  - Ali, Sadia
TI  - Improving Diabetes Control Using Lean Six Sigma Quality Improvement in an Endocrine Clinic in a Large Accountable Care Organization
AID  - 10.2337/cd20-0048
DP  - 2020 Nov 25
TA  - Clinical Diabetes
PG  - cd200048
4099  - http://clinical.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/11/24/cd20-0048.short
4100  - http://clinical.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/11/24/cd20-0048.full
AB  - This article describes a quality improvement project to reduce the number of patients with diabetes who have poor glycemic control in a large tertiary care endocrinology clinic. The project used the Lean Six Sigma Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control process improvement methodology to develop clinic workflow processes for obtaining A1C measurements in a timely manner to facilitate interventions to improve glycemic control. The percentage of patients with poorly controlled diabetes (A1C >9.0% or missing value in the past 12 months) significantly improved from 26.4% at baseline to 16% (P <0.001), and the proportion of patients with an A1C test within 3–6 months of an appointment improved from 76 to 92%.