In 2023, The ATS began an effort to initiate a data-driven quality improvement and implementation approach to measure the diffusion of ATS documents. The ATS develops and disseminates clinical practice guidelines, clinical and technical statements, and produces patient education materials which are essential components to implementation.
To date, we measure engagement with these products though page views and downloads but not implementation in the practice setting. The Vaccine Initiative (CMSS grant) provides ATS the opportunity to use a quality improvement approach to measure and learn vaccine processes in patients with respiratory disease. Leveraging the Vaccine Initiative, ATS will develop the structure to continue to measure implementation beyond the life of the initiative.
We will accomplish our goal by initially choosing a feasible and meaningful clinical recommendation with robust evidence from ATS clinical practice guidelines or clinical and technical statements and measuring its implementation using a quality improvement approach. Working closely with the ATS Quality Improvement and Implementation Committee, we will recruit a health system and/or clinics to explore how to most efficiently and effectively measure implementation. Our short-term objective is to select and study at least one clinical recommendation and apply these learnings to a sustainable process. Our long-term goal is to develop a model and process for ATS to continue to measure guidelines and statement implementation.