NYS Quality Corner: Organizational HIV Treatment Cascades

The Organizational HIV Treatment Cascade was developed by the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute’s HIV Quality of Care Program to integrate public health initiatives with quality improvement projects at individual health care facilities. The organizational treatment cascade encourages a broad approach to monitoring the quality of care by including all people living with HIV who have received any service at that organization during the year. Organizations submit these patient-level data with an analysis of care outcomes, goals for improvement, projects to accomplish these goals and their plan for involving consumers in the improvement process.

Quality Improvement Profiles

Each year, the Quality of Care Program uses these submissions and derived benchmark data to update organization-specific Quality Improvement Profiles. The Profiles are intended as quality tools to give organizations a data-informed perspective on what approaches might or might not be working to improve HIV care. They include historical data from the organizational treatment cascade reviews that can be used to understand changes in outcomes over time. The QI profiles are shared with each organization to assist them in analyzing disparities among patient subpopulations and identifying opportunities for improvement. The profiles also include comments from quality coaches assigned by the Quality of Care Program, information on consumer involvement in quality improvement and a summary of the organization’s participation in peer-learning activities.

We have selected the following example Profiles to highlight a variety of organization types in different geographic regions, underscoring how the process supports quality improvement across New York State.

Want to know more about Organizational HIV Treatment Cascades? Email QOCreviews@health.ny.gov