Evaluation of the performance improvement CME paradigm for pain management in the long-term care setting

A performance improvement continuing medical education (PI CME) activity was designed to assist clinicians with accurately identifying and appropriately managing persistent pain in long-term care facility (LTCF) residents.

Volunteer LTCFs participated in a three-stage PI CME model consisting of: 1) baseline assessment, 2) implementation of practice improvement interventions, and 3) reassessment. Expert faculty chose performance measures and interventions for the activity. A champion was designated ateach LTCF to collect resident charts and enter data into an online database.

Eight LTCFs located across the United States participated in the activity.

Fifty resident charts were randomly selected by each LTCF champion (25 for stage 1 and 25 for stage 3); a total of 350 charts were reviewed.

In addition to a toolkit containing numerous performance improvement resources, an in-service meeting led by an expert faculty member was conducted at each LTCF.

Stage 3 data were collected 6 weeks after implementation of interventions and compared with stage 1 baseline data to measure change in performance.

Aggregate data collected from seven LTCFs completing the PI CME activity through stage 3 revealed improvements from baseline in four of five performance measures.

This CME activity allowed for collection of data demonstrating performance improvement in persistent pain management. The tools used as part of the intervention (available at http://www.achlpicme.org/LTC/toolkit) may help other clinicians enhance their management of LTCF residents with persistent pain.