Effects of repeated use of the American Osteopathic Association's Clinical Assessment Program on measures of care for patients with diabetes mellitus.

CONTEXT The American Osteopathic Association developed its Clinical Assessment Program (AOA-CAP) for Residencies to provide a mechanism for osteopathic residency programs to measure and improve their quality of patient care. OBJECTIVE To compare program performance in processes of care and intermediate outcomes for patients with diabetes mellitus in residency programs that contributed data to the AOA-CAP for the first time vs residency programs that contributed data repeatedly. METHODS Osteopathic family medicine residency programs that entered data into the AOA-CAP diabetes registry between July 1, 2005, and December 31, 2007, were included in the present study. Residency programs were separated into those that entered data into the registry for the first time during the 2005-2007 cycle (ie, first-time programs) and those that also entered data into the registry during the previous cycle (2003-2005) (ie, repeat programs). Measures of processes of care were annual foot examination, annual referral for ophthalmologic examination, annual microalbuminuria screening, use of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) if albuminuria is present, use of ACE inhibitors or ARBs if hypertension is present, glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA(1c)) test in the previous year, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) test in the previous year. Measures of intermediate outcomes were control of blood pressure, HbA(1c), and LDL-C. Processes of care and outcome composite scores were also computed. RESULTS Data from 52 osteopathic family medicine residency programs consisting of 2568 patient cases were analyzed. Twenty-three first-time programs with 992 cases and 29 repeat programs with 1576 cases entered data into the registry in the 2005-2007 cycle. Repeat programs had statistically significant better performance than first-time programs in the composite measure of processes of care (P=.0023)-largely the result of increased use of ACE inhibitors and ARBs in patients with albuminuria (P=.0087). The difference in the composite measure of intermediate outcomes was not statistically significant between the 2 groups. CONCLUSION Repeated participation in the AOA-CAP registry was associated with improved residency program performance on the composite process of care measure but not on intermediate outcome measures for patients with diabetes mellitus. This finding suggests that osteopathic residency programs need to provide better training on adjusting patient care according to performance results.