NPQR Ensures Patient Safety Through Comprehensive, Personalized Education

As health care moves toward a valued-based model, providers and medical laboratories will need robust tools to measure performance in order to enhance quality and improve patient care. ASCP’s National Pathology Quality Registry (NPQR) offers participants the opportunity to benchmark across similar practices nationwide and will connect participants with education to support improvement efforts.

Whether contributing to patients’ care in a high-ranking healthcare system, a traditional academic medical center, or small, rural practice, pathologists and laboratory professionals often recognize their challenges. At the same time, they often lack the resources to get to the heart of correcting a challenge. ASCP will provide customized educational resources to help participants improve on patient safety challenges that are identified through NPQR.  

ASCP will also provide educational content on basic quality improvement (QI) and implementation science to level-set and provide resources for laboratories to fully comprehend QI at a foundational level (PDSA, lean, etc.).

The data that the NPQR gathers from participating laboratories and pathology practices will become the cornerstone to measure how current systems are working at each site and to implement improvement initiatives. ASCP will continue to interact with NPQR participants over time and provide education to help them continuously improve outcomes.

“We recognize that as NPQR participants see their practice data and have the ability to benchmark, there may be areas where certain health systems excel or where gaps may be identified that demand focus and will benefit from educational support through the expertise of ASCP volunteers and staff,” said Amy J. Wendel Spiczka, MS,HTL(ASCP)^CM,SCT,MB^CM, ASCP Senior Director, Quality Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Practice. “ASCP will partner to design personalized education plans that suit site and individual pathologist performance improvement needs. ASCP is linking its wealth of educational materials to the NPQR so participants can utilize just-in-time learning or other pertinent education modalities to enhance patient safety and continuous quality improvement.”

As an example, ASCP is the only pathology organization that is participating in the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign. ASCP has linked its Choosing Wisely recommendations, which have been vetted through the Society’s Effective Test Utilization Committee, to the NPQR so that participants have evidence-based benchmarks with which to review their own data.

ASCP will also tap into its University of Pathology Informatics, Lab Management University, Leadership Institute and other curricula to equip laboratory leaders with the knowledge they need to implement change and inspire those they work with to enhance pathologists’ and laboratory professionals’ effectiveness in the lab. To learn more about ASCP’s NPQR click here.