The SCORH’s Center for Practice Transformation announces the completion of cohort 2 for the 4C Collaborative sponsored by SC DHEC’s Division of Diabetes and Heart Disease Management. The purpose of the 4C Collaborative was to provide practices with the knowledge and skills to improve diabetes and cardiovascular disease care in clinical settings. This was a data-driven quality improvement initiative that used evidence-based improvement strategies to optimize operational efficiency and promote patient self-management.

Nine practices were represented in Cohort 2:

  • Blythewood Medical Associates
  • Community Medical Clinic of Kershaw County
  • Community Wellness Group
  • Edisto Regional Health Services
  • Free Medical Clinic of Darlington County
  • Greenville Free Medical Clinic
  • Lovelace Family Practice
  • Prisma Health Family Medicine – Colonial
  • Tandem Health

Daniel T. Lackland, DrPH, FACE, FAHA, FASH, a 4C faculty member and Fellow of the American Society of Hypertension, believes that the collaborative is an essential forum for a public health focus for South Carolina – where the state’s citizens can hear trusted information.

“The collaborative is a team of interdisciplinary and inter-professional individuals and groups on the quest to reduce risks for the SC population,” Lackland shared in a recent interview. “With hypertension and diabetes as major focus conditions, the 4C Collaborative is addressing the greatest public health need, and as we come to the backend of the pandemic, this groundwork should lead to high impact on disease risks reduction.”

The 4C Collaborative was organized into three action periods. During each action period, practices attended live learning sessions and webinars, conducted rapid change testing, and developed new or updated existing clinical policies/protocols to reflect adopted quality improvement strategies.

Thanh Dat Vo, PharmD-Pharmacist-In-Charge at Greenville Free Medical Clinic shared that the process of creating the diabetes protocol was interesting and allowed for collaboration with the medical director and the entire clinical team.

“The protocol really helped us work more independently to give the patient an even more focused and individualized therapy. It is very encouraging when we hear providers say they see a positive trend in their patients’ blood sugar readings. Our next goal is to add GLP-1 agonist(s) to the list of medication that we titrate and manage.”

Collaborative learning across teams forces individuals to strengthen relationships on the team, develop new connections, and promotes learning from other viewpoints. Taurie Rhoten, Director of Clinical Operations-Adult Health, Behavioral Health and Family Medicine at Tandem Health, appreciated the support and network the collaborative provided to learn from other clinics and healthcare organizations.

“The acknowledgement and support of our quality initiatives lends to the sustainability of the project,” Rhoten said. “Having external resources, with different perspectives, allowed us to expand our projects beyond our vision. The collaborative also gave us an opportunity to measure and quantify our work which helped validate our efforts and kept us moving forward.”

SCORH’s Center for Practice Transformation team, 4C faculty, SC DHEC, SC AHEC, and the practices became a team of interdisciplinary and inter-professional individuals on the quest to improve patient outcomes in the state of South Carolina.

– LaRonda Johnson, practice transformation consultant