Texas Academy of Family Physicians Foundation

Improving Diabetes Care through Implementation of HIT in Solo & Small Family Physician Practice

Executive Summary: Texas Academy of Family Physicians Foundation sought to demonstrate how family physicians in small / solo practices can improve treatment of diabetes using  HIT and train family practitioners to utilize disease-management HIT. The grantee reports several lessons learned from the project: 1) Implementation of IT in small practices requires more support and time than were available; 2) Practices that were more likely to sustain the registry were less concerned with the ROI; 3) Poor interoffice communication was a barrier; 4) Even for "early adopters," a web-based registry was difficult to implement  because of a lack of support; 5)Practices that understood how a diabetes registry could be useful and helpful to patients are more likely to implement and sustain the registry; and 6) Patients seen in practices with sustained use of the registry had better control o f A1c, Total Cholesterol and LDL.

Website: http://www.tafp.org/