Objectives: To document the presence and functioning of different practice systems in a small sample of medical groups in Minnesota and to examine the relationship between the presence of practice systems and prior adoption of an electronic medical record (EMR).

Study Design: Descriptive study of the frequency of practice systems in 11 medical groups.

Methods: We recruited 11 medical groups for the study. Four groups had an EMR; the other groups used paper medical records, often supplemented by electronic ordering or data systems. Using an on-site audit team, we validated the presence of practice systems organized under 8 categories.

Results: All of the medical groups had implemented a substantial number of practice systems for care management of patients with chronic conditions. Although the medical groups with an EMR tended to have more comprehensive practice systems in place, the medical groups without an EMR also had most of the practice systems.

Conclusions: Although required in some functions, an EMR may not be necessary in facilitating practice systems that support consistent management of patients with chronic illness. Approaches are needed that will encourage the implementation of practice systems in medical groups with and without an EMR.

(Am J Manag Care 2005;11:789-796)

The need for major improvements in medical care in the United States has become clear since the release of important reports from the Institute of Medicine^1,2 and the publication of a study of the quality of national healthcare by McGlynn et al.³ This need is particularly important in the care of patients with chronic disease, an area that will become even more critical as the population of older persons with these conditions increases.⁴ As illustrated by the chronic care model (the dominant conceptual framework for effective care of chronic conditions), care delivery organizations of all sizes must implement practice systems to provide consistent and comprehensive care.^5,6 The term practice systems refers to organized processes designed to assure that certain information or services are collected or provided routinely to patients or to healthcare personnel (eg, reminders, test results, and education).

The problem is that few of these practice systems are in place, even in larger medical groups. Casalino et al⁷ studied the presence of practice systems (termed care management processes [CMPs] by them) in 1040 physician organizations with 20 or more physicians, medical groups that should have the resources to implement such support for delivery of quality healthcare. Of a possible 16 CMPs, they found a mean of only 5 CMPs per medical group. Because the presence of external incentives and clinical information technology systems was strongly associated with CMP use, they suggested that providing these might increase the use of CMPs.

Other than that study⁷ and other studies by Casalino et al, there is little information in the medical literature documenting the extent to which practice systems are present in medical groups. Moreover, the sparse information that is available about practice systems is neither detailed nor verified by on-site audits. As part of a study testing the validity of a new questionnaire method to measure the presence of practice systems for the care of patients with chronic disease, we documented detailed information about practice systems among 11 medical groups in Minnesota through self-assessment and on-site audits. In addition, we wanted to learn whether medical groups with an electronic medical record (EMR) were more likely to have such practice systems than medical groups without an EMR.

METHODS

This study was conducted in Minnesota in collaboration with the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement, a quality improvement collaborative that includes most of the medical groups and hospitals in the state among its members. At the time of this study, those member organizations included about 75% of the physicians in Minnesota.⁸ We obtained contact information from the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement for 19 of their 38 medical group members who provide primary care to adults, specifying only that we wanted to recruit medical groups with a diversity of locations, sizes, and sophistication about quality improvement methods.

Recruitment was conducted by first sending a letter describing the study to the medical director (or equivalent) of each medical group, followed by telephone calls from one of us (LIS) until each medical group had decided whether to participate. Three medical groups declined participation (each on the grounds of having too much activity or turmoil at the time), and 2 medical groups agreed too late to be included. Three medical groups participated in pretesting the survey and the onsite audit, leaving 11 medical groups with complete information for this report.

This article is based on information gathered in onsite audits conducted by 2 trained and experienced nurse auditors. The auditors met with each participating medical group's quality improvement director and other staff for assessment of information about which they had particular knowledge. The on-site audit covered the following 8 practice systems and their component processes: (1) continuity of care (a system to maintain an ongoing and effective relationship between an individual clinician and a group of healthcare practitioners involved in providing care for a given patient), (2) registry (an organized system that allows the office or clinic to group patients by diagnoses and other parameters and uses the groupings to assist in the provision of care), (3) clinical information (systems and processes associated with a database of key patient and patient population information that can help manage patient care), (4) systematic monitoring (the use of a database to monitor key indicators of chronically ill patients' medical conditions for information that may require immediate attention), (5) clinician reminders (special communications intended to help the office or clinic team adhere to best practices related to the care of the individual patient), (6) performance tracking and feedback (the process of using clinical information systems to aggregate key indicators culled from a patient registry or other data source for the purposes of benchmarking performance and directing improvement activities), (7) clinical quality evaluation and improvement (a formal process to assess care, develop interventions, and use data to monitor the effects), and (8) care management (a set of specifically defined services for managing patients with chronic illness involving multiple practitioners and care between office visits).

The 8 practice systems and their components had been previously identified by an expert advisory panel convened by the National Committee for Quality Assurance to create the Practice Systems Assessment Survey (http://www.ncqa.org/Programs/RADD/researchreports.htm). This advisory panel was formed to identify the practice systems and components important for implementing the chronic care model framework. For each of the 8 practice systems selected by the National Committee for Quality Assurance panel, the on-site auditors in the present study reviewed evidence that the practice system and its components were present and usable. At the end of the on-site audit, the auditors completed an assessment of how well and consistently each practice system that was present was being used. An investigator or data collection supervisor (SCS) accompanied the auditors to most of the site visits to monitor them, and several debriefing sessions were conducted with the entire investigator group to clarify and verify the information and its collection process. After the on-site audit information was entered into an electronic database and the data were cleaned, item frequencies were organized by medical group for the analysis herein. This study was approved and monitored by the HealthPartners Institutional Review Board.

RESULTS

Descriptive information about the participating medical groups is given in Table 1. In this and subsequent tables, data from the 7 medical groups without an EMR are contrasted with data from the 4 medical groups with an EMR. One of the 4 medical groups had an EMR that comprised all of the functions tested in the on-site audit; the other 3 supplemented their EMR with separate ordering or data systems. Six of the 7 medical groups with paper medical records managed some information with separate electronic systems. Examples of such systems are registries created from electronic billing systems, electronic reporting systems in in-house laboratories, and electronic appointment systems with the ability to include specific reminders.

Table 2 gives information about the presence of practice systems as demonstrated in the on-site audit, with the auditors' subjective assessment of how consistently the practice systems were being used. Although almost all of the 11 medical groups had at least some component of each practice system present, the auditors found that some practice systems were not consistently used, with the medical groups with an EMR being more likely to consistently use existing practice systems. Overall, the practice system that was least likely to be present was registry of patients with chronic conditions, and this was most lacking in the medical groups without an EMR. Based on the auditors' assessments, some of the 7 medical groups without an EMR did not use systematic monitoring or clinician reminders consistently even though they had a non-EMR method to do so.

Three items related to the practice system of continuity of care were assessed. Because all 11 medical groups had evidence of each of those components, findings for this practice system are not given in a table. Each medical group demonstrated that it had identified a personal clinician for each patient, had a process to assure that most patient visits were with that clinician, and had formal primary care teams to facilitate access and follow-up, with expanded roles for nurses or other team members.

Tables 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 summarize the extent to which the other 6 practice systems were present in the 11 medical groups. These tables give the number of medical groups having the components of the practice system summarized in each table. Most components of each practice system were present in all of the 11 medical groups. Although the 4 medical groups with an EMR were somewhat more likely to have all of the practice system components, the 7 medical groups without an EMR had other ways to perform the functions of the practice systems. In particular, there is little difference among the 11 medical groups in the presence of most components of the performance tracking and feedback practice system and no difference among the 11 medical groups in the presence of all components of the clinical quality evaluation and improvement practice system. To clarify this, we italicized each table component in which the medical groups with an EMR were more than twice as likely as the medical groups without an EMR to have that component. Most italicized components are found in Table 3, which addresses the clinical information practice system.

DISCUSSION

Our findings demonstrate that the 11 medical groups studied had a high number of the practice systems that are believed to be important for providing effective care for patients with chronic conditions. They also had most of the detailed components of those practice systems. Although the medical groups with an EMR had more practice systems and components present, the medical groups relying on paper medical records had other ways to implement most of the components of the practice systems. Only 13 of 60 total components in the practice systems were more than twice as likely to be present in the medical groups with an EMR, suggesting that an EMR is necessary for or enhances these capabilities. As expected, those components were largely related to information technology, such as reminders, registries, and data about individual clinicians.

Few studies have documented any aspect of the presence of practice systems among medical groups. After postulating the chronic care model,⁶ Wagner et al⁹ studied 72 leading chronic disease programs. They found that only 1 program included all 6 elements of the chronic care model framework, and only 5 other programs included 5 of 6 elements. Solberg et al^10,11 assessed the importance of practice systems in delivering preventive services and reported in the mid 1990s that practice systems were infrequent findings among 44 medical practices in Minnesota.

In 2003, Casalino et al⁷ reported that, among 1040 physician organizations (with ≥ 20 physicians) responding to a survey about the extent to which physician organizations use CMPs, 50% had 4 or fewer of a possible 16 CMPs for chronic disease care (similar to the practice systems described in this study), and only 22% had more than 8 CMPs. A subsequent investigation by Li et al¹² studied the presence of 4 CMPs (registry, guidelines, case management, and physician feedback) among 987 medical groups that provided care for patients with diabetes mellitus. They found that 48% had 0 to 1, 20% had 2, and 32% had 3 to 4 of these CMPs. The characteristics associated with the presence of these CMPs were external incentives, a computerized information system, and ownership by a hospital or a health maintenance organization. Results of other interview studies^13,14 among leading healthcare delivery systems suggest that the main barriers to successful implementation of CMPs are inadequate resources or information systems, physician busyness or resistance, and lack of an effective means for reimbursement. The main facilitators were strong leadership, an organizational culture valuing quality of care, the presence of electronic information systems, and supportive health plans.

There seems to be widespread perception on the part of policy makers that an EMR is the principal or even the only change required for closing the quality of care gaps identified by the Institute of Medicine.^1,2 There is little clear evidence on this important issue, but clearly an EMR is not the sine qua non of efficacy. The Veterans Health Administration has made remarkable strides in improving its quality of care, with Asch et al¹⁵ documenting 10% to 20% better performance by the Veterans Health Administration in chronic disease care and preventive care (but not acute care) compared with care delivered by a national sample of providers. Although its integrated electronic information system was credited for some of this improvement, the Veterans Health Administration has implemented other quality improvement and comparative performance reporting activities as well. In a randomized trial of electronic information system implementation of cardiac care guidelines targeting primary care physicians and pharmacists in Indiana, Tierney et al¹⁶ found no effect of cardiac care guidelines generated by an EMR on physicians' adherence to evidence-based guidelines and suggested that methods of affecting clinician behavior other than an EMR were needed.

Before the value of an EMR in improving healthcare delivery can be thoroughly tested, the types of practice systems that are primarily or exclusively driven by EMR adoption need to be characterized in detail. The present study takes a first step toward that goal. Because the 11 medical groups described herein appeared to be able to implement almost as many practice system components without an EMR as with an EMR, the stage is set for comparison trials of the effectiveness of different approaches to information systems and of various types of practice systems.

Although the present study is valuable in documenting in detail for the first time, to our knowledge, the presence of a variety of practice systems in a sample of medical groups, it has significant limitations for generalization of the results. The number of medical groups studied was small, and although we recruited a diverse sample, the medical groups were all large, with more midlevel practitioners and registered nurses (Table 1) than most primary care practices in the United States, where only 18% of physicians work in groups of 10 or more.⁷ Also, the medical groups described herein were all members of a sophisticated quality improvement collaborative (the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement) that focuses on encouraging the development and effective use of practice systems, although half the medical groups were new to that membership. Whether increased use of practice systems is driving quality improvement or, conversely, participation in quality improvement is driving the adoption of practice systems (or some other factor is driving both) is a fertile area for further inquiry. Despite these limitations, this study demonstrates that private medical groups, including those without an EMR, can organize their practices for systematic care of persons with chronic conditions.

Acknowledgments

This study would not have been possible without the close cooperation of the staff and leadership of the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement. We are especially indebted to the leaders, physicians, and staff of the following medical groups that contributed to the implementation of this study: Affiliated Community Medical Center, CentraCare Clinic, Community University Health Care Center, Fairview Lakes Regional Health Care, Fairview Red Wing Regional Health Care, Family Practice Medical Center, Grand Itasca Clinic and Hospital, Hutchinson Medical Center, MeritCare, North Clinic, Northwest Family Physicians, Olmsted Medical Center, Park Nicollet Health Services, and Stillwater Medical Group. We also appreciate the careful work of the on-site audit team, including Laurie Van Arman, LPN, Betty Lindstrom, RN, and Colleen King.