Clinical Quality Assurance

During this past year the Ryan White Part A Program Support Division was renamed HIV Clinical Quality Assurance (HIVCQA) Support. This year, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) issued updated service definitions. HIVCQA Support Staff, in collaboration with the Ryan White Part A Program/Human Services Department, coordinated with the AIDS Educational and Treatment Center (AETC) to conduct the 2007-2008 primary medical care chart reviews using the new definitions. The AETC Chart Review Program offers medical providers receiving Ryan White funding an opportunity to determine whether the standards of care are being met. In addition, HIVCQA Support Staff provided a series of AETC Medical Case Management trainings, including but not limited to topics related to the latest HIV/AIDS research and treatments, understanding HIV laboratory reports and assessing clinical needs. Five trainings were conducted this past year.

To support the new HRSA mandated quality management (QM) plan, HIVCQA Support Staff completed the HRSA-funded National Quality Center (NQC) Training-of-Trainers Program. The program is designed to develop qualified HIV Quality Improvement (QI) trainers, to spread QM concepts by increasing training opportunities, to build QM capacity in Ryan White-funded programs, to increase confidence in facilitating QI training in HIV care environments, to increase mastery of QI principles and their application in HIV care, to understand master adult learning theories, to understand QI and QM training workshop development, and to develop planning action steps based on acquired training knowledge and skills. HIVCQA support staff developed a training series component utilizing NQC, AETC and other QI resources to provide subgrantee staff and consumers with the knowledge to improve quality HIV care at their agencies. Four trainings were conducted during the past year.

The Fort Lauderdale/Broward Eligible Metropolitan Area’s (EMA) 2008-2009 application received a perfect 100 score resulting in an $878,958 funding increase! Each year when the Federal Ryan White Title I/Part A grant application guidance is released, BRHPC’s HIV Planning Council and Clinical Quality Assurance staff work as a team with Broward County’s Ryan White Grantee staff to paint the picture of Broward County’s “severe need” for HIV/AIDS core medical and support services.

Ryan White Part A grant funds are allocated in two parts, formula and supplemental. The formula award is calculated based on the share of living HIV/AIDS cases in all Eligible Metropolitan Areas (EMA) and the supplemental award is determined by the score assigned to the grant during the review process. Fort Lauderdale’s formula award was $9,444,098 and the supplemental award was $4,606,203. The Fort Lauderdale EMA received $4,606,203 in FY 2008 supplemental funds compared with $3,727,245 in FY 2007. This increase of $878,958 ranks Fort Lauderdale as the highest percentage increase in the state (23.6%), followed by Tampa-St. Petersburg (13.3%) and West Palm Beach (3.5%).