Organizational Costs and Benefits of a Health System Quality Improvement Intervention to Increase Aspirin Use for Primary Prevention of Heart Attack and Stroke

Abstract

Performance improvement on clinical quality outcomes typically requires significant effort by personnel in health care organizations. Understanding the cost of quality improvement is important given diffusion of value-based contracting. This study investigates the organizational costs and benefits associated with planning and implementing the Ask about Aspirin intervention to increase use of low-dose aspirin in clinically recommended patient populations. Data from 4 health systems in Minnesota were used to estimate personnel effort and labor resource costs as well as corresponding benefits, measured as the change in aspirin use among eligible candidates during the study period. Overall personnel effort across the 4 systems was approximately 3900 hours with corresponding resource costs estimated to be $214,385. Aspirin use increased 4.7% overall, corresponding to roughly 1530 new users in the aspirin candidate population. Significant variation was observed by system in total hours reported, distribution of effort by activity type, and in benefits realized from the intervention.