Chronic Disease QI

DCPCA works with health centers to implement evidence-based interventions to improve health outcomes for cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes. DCPCA works closely to align and implement the initiatives of DC Million Hearts, NACHC Million Hearts and HRSA by working towards the goals of the national Million Hearts initiative which aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes.

Since 2013, DCPCA has been a partner in DC Million Hearts. The District program is part of the national HHS-directed Million Hearts initiative which aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes. DC Million Hearts is a network made up of multiple public and private organizations, including national and regional organizations, local healthcare systems, academic organizations, and community organizations and programs. Through collaboration with key partners, population-level monitoring, and support for quality improvement, the DC Million Hearts program aims to reduce morbidity and mortality due to heart disease and diabetes in DC.

Since 2019, DCPCA has partnered with NACHC on the Million Hearts Preventing Heart Attacks and Strokes in Primary Care project. The project focuses on Improving Blood Pressure Control for African Americans and Improving Appropriate use of Statin Therapy.

DCPCA supports chronic disease QI the following ways:

Provide technical assistance and training to DCPCA participating health centers on evidence-based interventions to improve health outcomes for those with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and cholesterol.

Our technical assistance promotes workflow redesign and meaningful use of EHRs to improve provider identification of undiagnosed hypertension and management of adults with hypertension. Our technical assistance addresses an array of topics including; screening mechanisms (medical/non-medical i.e. SDOH), utilization of data, lifestyle change promotion, and patient engagement (i.e. SMBP, HIT, etc.).

Develop solutions to address the social determinants of health driving outcomes for diabetes and heart disease.

DCPCA serves as the backbone organization for DC-PACT (Positive Accountable Community Transformation), a coalition working to identify and address social challenges that create health disparities by linking safety-net provider organizations in the District. For more information, please read about our DC PACT project.

Produce quality measure data from health centers to inform District strategy.

DCPCA reports to DC Health with health center data on current clinical quality measures for heart disease and diabetes. We provide health center members with support to expand data reporting and analysis capabilities to inform chronic disease care.