Yesterday I spoke at a session on practice management called “Practice Innovation: How to Reduce Costs and Increase Quality.” This session offered a high-level look at the many resources the College has available to help practices deliver high quality care while saving money.

The session had an all-star lineup: former (as of convocation last night) ACC President Fred Bove, M.D., M.A.C.C., and now current president Ralph Brindis, M.D., F.A.C.C., were the session chairs. Ralph gave a talk about the role of registries in a reformed health care system and how registries can help measure success, reduce health care disparities and serve as an important tool in comparative effectiveness research (similar to what I wrote about on Sunday).

ACC SVP of Science and Quality Janet Wright, M.D., F.A.C.C., talked about the various quality programs that ACC runs, such as the highly successful Door-to-Balloon campaign, the newly formed Hospital to Home program and medication adherence initiatives. Co-Chair of the Health IT Committee Jimmy Tcheng, M.D., F.AC.C., talked about health IT and the tools necessary to adapt to delivery system change. My presentation at the session covered ways of reducing variations in CV care through tools like appropriate use criteria.

This session goes to show all the different ways that the ACC offers members to improve quality in different areas. That said, CV practices around the country are struggling under the recent payment cuts put into effect by CMS to make fewer practice dollars go farther. It’s understandable that the thought of participating in a quality program might seem impossible at this point. However, even in economically distressing times, the ACC continues to promote quality programs because quality must be the core of what we as health care professionals do. At some point (hopefully!), practices will have the resources to fully commit and expand their participation in quality programming.

*** Image from morgueFile (jdurham). ***

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