Case Study: Rhode Island Quality Institute

The Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI) is a center for collaborative innovation that advances health and care transformation in the state. RIQI’s initiatives align leading-edge health care improvement strategies with needs and opportunities in its community. As a catalyst for change, RIQI leverages deep expertise in health information exchange to enable provider interoperability, and in quality improvement science and quality data analytics to drive practice transformation.

Problem

RIQI recognized a need to reduce emergency medicine imaging for low back pain. “Emergency physicians sometimes don’t have a full history for a patient, so we are afraid we might be missing something,” said William H. Sabina, MD, FACEP, former Director of the Emergency Department and Chief of Emergency Medicine at South County Hospital in Rhode Island.

Solution

RIQI and the American College of Emergency Physicians’ (ACEP) Emergency Quality Network (E-QUAL) formed a statewide collaborative to implement Choosing Wisely recommendations about back pain across emergency departments. The collaborative was implemented at seven of the state’s 11 hospitals, ranging from rural hospitals to large trauma units. A multi-pronged Choosing Wisely approach was implemented with a goal of reducing imaging for non-traumatic back pain in low-risk patients by 30 percent by December 2017.

Read about the results and keys to success here.