Implementation of Enhanced Tobacco Use Measures and Intensive Training in New York

The focus of this Pfizer Independent Grant for Learning and Change is to develop and implement a new comprehensive measure for tobacco use and cessation attempts within NYS OMH facilities.  This is a large system that serves over 23,000 outpatients with serious mental illness (SMI) per year. Improving documentation of tobacco use and cessation attempts through the electronic health record (EHR) is a powerful strategy that increases smoking cessation interventions provided by health care professionals in primary care settings.   We will implement a new tobacco use measure in the statewide EHR through a series of training sessions, quality improvement meetings and Learning Collaboratives.   A similar approach was used successfully in NYS OMH to implement health screenings for cardio-metabolic disease. Once in place, the measure will be used to evaluate other tobacco interventions and give ongoing feedback to individual clinics and providers.  This activity promotes systems change and is synergistic with other planned efforts by NY OMH to provide intensive training for its health care professionals and to develop tobacco free policies for these clinical sites.  Implementation of tobacco use and cessation attempts through the electronic health record (EHR) will accomplish many things in the OMH system: it will raise the awareness and importance of addressing tobacco, it will allow for improved ongoing measurement of tobacco use and quit attempts, and it will be an effective longitudinal measure to evaluate the impact of tobacco-related activities on patient outcomes.