American College of Cardiology Body Mass Index Counseling Quality Improvement Initiative

Overweight/obesity, prevalent cardiovascular risk factors in children, can be associated with increased risk of adverse outcomes in children with heart disease. The American College of Cardiology (ACC) developed quality metrics including a BMI metric related to identifying and counseling overweight and obese children presenting to cardiology clinics. This metric was used for a multicenter collaborative learning Quality improvement (QI) Project through the ACC Quality Network (QNet). Our aim was to increase the percentage of children between ages 3 and 18 years presenting to cardiology clinics at participating centers with BMI > 85th percentile who received appropriate counseling. Participating centers submitted data quarterly to QNet for a sample of patients who received counseling. A Key Driver Diagram was created to help teams drive improvement. Individual centers customized interventions and participated in network-wide educational learning sessions about QI and shared experience. Statistical process control charts were used. From 04/01/2017 to 09/30/2019, 27,511 patient visits were included. Among 32 participating centers, overall counseling rate was 54%. The BMI counseling rate increased from 25% in 2017Q2 to 54% in 2019Q3. There was a wide variation from 10 to 100% in the performance of individual centers. The overall rate of identification and counseling of overweight and obese children presenting to ambulatory cardiology clinics in participating centers is low. There is wide variation in the performance of centers, providing an opportunity for improvement. Using this multicenter learning approach, individual centers have demonstrated improvement. This demonstrates that collaborative learning approaches in QI can increase implementation of the metric.

Automated summary

Overweight/obesity is a prevalent cardiovascular risk factor in children, which can lead to increased risk of adverse outcomes in children with heart disease. The ACC developed quality metrics, including a BMI metric, to identify and counsel overweight and obese children in cardiology clinics. Through a multicenter collaborative learning QI project, participating centers aimed to increase the percentage of children between ages 3 and 18 with a BMI > 85th percentile who received appropriate counseling.