Resident Sensitive Quality Measures for General Pediatrics: Alignment With Existing Care Recommendations

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Quality Improvement
• Healthcare Performance Assessment
• Medical Education Research

Background:

• Resident sensitive quality measures (RSQMs) represent a novel patient-centered approach to evaluating healthcare performance.
• The integration of RSQMs with established performance assessment frameworks requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and prioritize RSQMs specifically for outpatient general pediatrics, focusing on well-child visits at 0-2 months, 1 year, and 5 years.
• To compare the developed RSQMs against the established Bright Futures recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Main Methods:

• A nominal group technique (NGT) and Delphi process were employed, involving categorical pediatric residents, fellows, and faculty.
• Participants generated and prioritized RSQMs for three key well-child visit age groups.
• The final RSQMs were content-analyzed against the American Academy of Pediatrics Bright Futures guidelines.

Main Results:

• Fifteen RSQMs were prioritized for each well-child visit from an initial pool of 143 potential measures.
• Key prioritized areas included vaccine administration, screening documentation, and medication management.
• A strong alignment was observed between the developed RSQMs and the Bright Futures recommendations.

Conclusions:

• The developed RSQMs demonstrate good alignment with the Bright Futures framework, supporting their utility as process measures for assessing resident performance.
• These RSQMs are recommended for future research in resident performance evaluation and for guiding individual improvement initiatives.