The Regional QI Hub Quality Improvement Project has seen positive gains in 2025 as Wave 1 of the project concluded and Wave 2 kicked off. The Ohio Academy of Family Physicians (OAFP) has been a key partner in supporting this work.
Sponsored by the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) and administered by the Ohio Colleges of Medicine Government Resource Center (GRC) in partnership with faculty and staff from Ohio’s Colleges of Medicine (including Case Western Reserve University/Northeast Ohio Medical University, Ohio University, The Ohio State University, University of Cincinnati, and University of Toledo), the project seeks to support ODM’s Managed Care Population Health and Quality Strategy by promoting the health of the Medicaid population and supporting healthcare delivery systems to improve performance, demonstrate value, and to reduce health disparities.
Each of the Colleges of Medicine (CoM), serving as a Regional Quality Improvement (QI) Hub, is working directly with the GRC team, external QI leaders, representatives from ODM, and Ohio’s Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) to establish sustainable QI infrastructures that can be leveraged to identify, implement, and spread QI projects at the regional level to impact population health and improve health outcomes.
Each of the Regional QI Hubs engaged at least 10 practices in Wave 1 to implement QI activities focused on the areas of hypertension and diabetes. In sum, a total of 77 spoke sites were engaged in Wave 1, including 45 primary care sites, 19 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), and 12 specialty care sites. Regional QI Hubs are each working to engage an additional 10 practice sites for Wave 2, which kicked off in March 2025. To date, a total of 72 spoke sites have been engaged in Wave 2, including 38 primary care sites, 31 FQHCs, and three specialty care sites.
For both Wave 1 and Wave 2, each participating site executed a data use agreement (DUA) with GRC to share their electronic health record (EHR) data extracts for baseline analysis. Baseline data were collected for a total of 48 performance metrics across the CoM Regional QI Hubs. Each engaged practice participated in a kickoff meeting to review best practices and participated in monthly action period calls and regular QI coaching sessions.
The OAFP supported this work in various ways. The OAFP has provided valuable activity credit for family physicians participating in each of the two topics (hypertension and diabetes) through the American Board of Family Medicine and the American Academy of Family Physicians, respectively. It has assisted in physician and practice recruitment through OAFP membership communications and aided in the dissemination of learnings from the project to OAFP members, increasing awareness of the QI hubs and opportunities to participate.
Looking ahead, the Regional QI Hub infrastructure will continue to be leveraged in future years to support robust and widespread implementation of QI activities with the overall goal of reaching 60% or more of the target population in the region over successive waves within a 5-year period.
Disclaimer: Views stated in this publication are those of the researchers only and are not to be attributed to the study sponsors, ODM, or to the federal Medicaid Program.