In the USA, People with serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI) die 25 years earlier than the general population! Sixty percent of the increased mortality is due to cardiovascular disease. In NYS, type 2 diabetes is twice as common in people with mental illness on Medicaid compared to the general Medicaid population. In a study of over 10,000 clients with schizophrenia or depression, 52% had metabolic syndrome, and 92% had at least one risk factor. Forty-three percent of clinical antipsychotic trials of intervention effectiveness (CATIE) participants had metabolic syndrome on enrollment.

In this quality improvement project, we worked on 3348 adult outpatient psychiatry patients, used techniques like FOCUS-PDCA, brain storming, root cause analysis to address cardiometabolic risk screening and reducing the risk among these patients. We used interventions like prescriber and patient education, streamlining the cardiovascular screening process in the clinic and multidisciplinary team discussions. We collected and analyzed data regarding clinical characteristics of such patients before and after the clinical interventions. HEDIS scores were used to measure the outcomes of the project.

In this talk, we want to discuss about quality improvement projects – the methods and processes involved. Also, we wanted to give a glimpse of our project – the plan, work flow processing and the data.