Dare County Quality Improvement Project for the Overweight and Obese Adult Patient

Abstract

Obesity is a serious disease that has tripled in prevalence since the 1980s, it affects all Americans either directly or indirectly, and attributes to several serious comorbidities and premature death. While guidelines do currently exist, provider weight management counseling is inconsistent and far from ideal. After educating the staff in a primary care setting on the importance of identifying patients with BMIs > 25 and providing those identified with weight management counseling, the staff showed a sitewide improvement in the identification of abnormal BMIs with a 37% increase in the use of corresponding overweight and obesity diagnosis codes, an 8% increase in patient weight management counseling, and an 88% increase in the use of weight management counseling billing codes.