Diabetic Nephropathy Screening in a Residency Clinic: Improvements Also Reveal Limits of Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) Metric

Quality Improvement Success Stories are published by the American Diabetes Association in collaboration with the American College of Physicians, Inc., and the National Diabetes Education Program. This series is intended to highlight best practices and strategies from programs and clinics that have successfully improved the quality of care for people with diabetes or related conditions. Each article in the series is reviewed and follows a standard format developed by the editors of Clinical Diabetes. The following article describes a resident-led initiative that improved diabetic nephropathy screening in a primary care clinic. It also highlights the challenges of complex metrics, as well as the potential unintended consequences of emphasizing one dimension of a care process over another.