Improving Chronic Illness Care
Improving Chronic Illness Care

Evidence Supporting the ACIC

Bonomi AE, Wagner EH, Glasgow RE, VonKorff M.  Assessment of chronic illness care (ACIC): a practical tool to measure quality improvement. Health Serv Res  2002; 37(3):791-820.
 
Correlation between ACIC subscales and faculty ratings of quality improvement were moderate to strong among teams enrolled in collaboratives to improve chronic illness care. 

Si D, Bailie R, Connors C et al. Assessing health centre systems for guiding improvement in diabetes care. BMC Health Serv Res 2005;  5:56.
 
In the Aboriginal community in Australia, the ACIC was used to explore if more developed systems were associated with better quality of diabetes care.  Four of the six subscales were independently associated with quality of diabetes care.  Increases in ACIC scores on the organizational influence, community linkages, clinical information systems scales were associated with improved adherence to process measures and improved outcomes including HbA1c, blood pressure, and total cholesterol.

Solberg LI, Crain AL, Sperl-Hillen JM, Hroscikoski MC, Engebretson KI, O'Connor PJ. Care quality and implementation of the chronic care model: a quantitative study. Ann Fam Med 2006; 4(4):310-6.
 
Solberg et al show that improvements in ACIC score and clinical process and outcome measures were achieved after system changes to improve the quality of care for diabetes, heart disease and depression.  However, only diabetes measures were correlated with improved ACIC scores & only on two subscales: clinical information systems & decision support.