Improvement of pregnancy counselling and contraception counselling and documentation in a single rheumatology academic practice: a quality improvement project

The purpose of this quality improvement project was to improve the rate of pregnancy counselling and documentation regarding the risk of being on teratogenic medications, including leflunomide, mycophenolate, methotrexate or cyclophosphamide in women of childbearing age (17–50 years). Our goal was to increase documentation rates by 25% in 6 months. We first performed an EMR chart review of 103 women who were seen in the 6 months prior to intervention by faculty at a single rheumatology academic centre. We then determined how many of those women had documented contraception or pregnancy counselling, which included written documentation anywhere in the note or ICD codes which were specific to pregnancy counselling or contraception counselling. Interventions were then implemented. The percentage of women who had documented pregnancy counselling did not change preintervention and postintervention; preintervention 37% of women received documented pregnancy counselling and postintervention 35% of women received documented pregnancy counselling. The percentage of women who had documented contraception counselling did however change preintervention and postintervention; preintervention 37% of women received documented contraception counselling and postintervention 51% of women received documented contraception counselling, which is a 14% improvement.