Identifying facilitators, barriers and areas of opportunity in diabetic retinopathy screening: quality improvement through qualitative methods.

OBJECTIVE

Quality improvement efforts have aimed to improve annual diabetic retinopathy screening at our institution, but rates remain well below goal. To better understand facilitators, barriers and operational issues unique to our health system and to develop a comprehensive understanding of the care pathway, the Patient Voice toolkit was applied.

METHODS

In-depth interviews were conducted individually with patients and care team members in a large urban academic medical centre with multiple satellite community clinics. Interviews with patients focused on facilitators and barriers to annual diabetic retinopathy screening. These interviews were transcribed and organised into discrete codes to identify initial themes. We interviewed clinic staff involved in diabetic retinopathy examination scheduling, execution or quality assurance. Interviews with care team members focused on training materials, camera operations and workflow.

RESULTS

Through analysis of 15 patient interviews, we found that facilitators included internal motivation, automated examination reminders, reminders from providers and utilisation of local optometry offices. Barriers included competing demands, distant retinal camera locations, limited appointment access and financial and insurance issues. Interviews with 13 care team members resulted in the creation of a process map, and areas of opportunity were identified in the training and operational workflows.

CONCLUSIONS

The inclusion of different stakeholder perspectives provides in-depth insight into facilitators and barriers to completing annual diabetic retinopathy screening, allowing for recommendations tailored to our specific health system and operations. Suggested operational improvements include expanding clinics that can perform this examination, increasing appointment flexibility, partnering with local optometry clinics and enhancing annual examination reminders to include more details about the examination. Recommendations suggested by staff include increasing patient education, setting expectations around the examination and implementing real-time feedback on image quality.