Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jul-Sep;34(3):243-248.
doi: 10.1097/QMH.0000000000000481. Epub 2025 Jul 10.

Specialty-Based Ambulatory Quality Improvement Program: A Specialty-Specific Ambulatory Metric Project

Arielle R Nagler  1 , Paul A Testa, Ilseung Cho, Gbenga Ogedegbe, Gary Kalkut, Dana R Gossett
Affiliations

Specialty-Based Ambulatory Quality Improvement Program: A Specialty-Specific Ambulatory Metric Project

Arielle R Nagler et al. Qual Manag Health Care. 2025 Jul-Sep.

Abstract

Background and objectives: Healthcare is increasingly being delivered in the outpatient setting, but robust quality improvement programs and performance metrics are lacking in ambulatory care, particularly specialty-based ambulatory care.

Methods: To promote quality improvement in ambulatory care, we developed an infrastructure to create specialty-specific quality measures and dashboards that could be used to display providers' performance across relevant measures to individual providers and institutional leaders.

Results: The products of this program include a governance and infrastructure for specialty-specific ambulatory quality metrics as well as two distinct dashboards for data display. One dashboard is provider-facing, displaying provider's performance on specialty-specific measures as compared to institutional standards. The second dashboard is a leadership dashboard that provides overall and provider-level information on performance across measures.

Conclusions: The Specialty-based Ambulatory Quality program reflects a systematic, institutionally-supported quality improvement framework that can be applied across diverse ambulatory specialties. As next steps, we plan to evaluate the program's impact on provider performance across measures and expand this program to other specialties practicing in the outpatient setting.

Keywords: ambulatory care; clinical competence; health care; health metrics; quality indicators.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Sarkar U. Tip of the iceberg: patient safety incidents in primary care. BMJ Qual Saf. 2016;25(7):477-479. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2015-005006. - DOI
    1. Ashman JJ, Okeyode TRP. Characteristics of office-based physician visits, 2016NCHS Data Brief, no. In: National Center for Health Statistics. Hyattsville: MD; 2019: 331.
    1. Bishay K, Causada-Calo N, Scaffidi M.A., et al. Associations between endoscopist feedback and improvements in colonoscopy quality indicators: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Gastrointest Endosc. 2020;92(5):1030-1040 e9. doi:10.1016/j.gie.2020.03.3865. - DOI
    1. Corley DA, Jensen CD, Marks AE, et al. Adenoma detection rate and risk of colorectal cancer and death. N Engl J Med. 2014;370(14):1298-1306. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1309086. - DOI

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources