How One Title X Grantee Leveled Up Its Data Quality
Published:
“The learning collaborative played a pivotal role in focusing our efforts on integrating family planning with primary care visits. This led to a significant expansion of eligible family planning visits with accurate data collection.”Family Practice and Counseling Network, an AccessMatters subrecipient
When you’re a Title X grantee with more than a dozen subrecipients that provide family planning services to over 50,000 clients a year, it’s no surprise when you have gaps in your data.
The problem? Having comprehensive data is really important. It enhances service delivery and improves compliance with the Total Program Concept, the requirement that Title X grantees and their subrecipients report family planning program “totals” in their Family Planning Annual Report (FPAR). This requirement helps affirm that agencies are providing equitable sexual and reproductive health services regardless of a client’s insurance and ability to pay.
To improve the quality of their data, Philadelphia-based Title X grantee AccessMatters sought technical assistance from the RHNTC. Together, they held a 4-session learning collaborative with 14 subrecipients to uncover the root causes of key data issues and identify solutions.
For example:
- Issue: Underreporting family planning encounters and total family planning visits
- Root cause: Administrators believe they are required only to report data on Title X clients who are uninsured
- Solution: Clarify the requirement to report data on all clients who receive family planning services regardless of insurance status
- Issue: High number of unknown annual income/family size
- Root cause: Clients often feel uncomfortable providing income documentation and neglect to fill out demographic information
- Solution: Give front desk staff a script they can use to:
- Explain importance of income and demographic information
- Ask clients to provide proof of or self-report income
- Assure clients they can receive services regardless of ability to pay
- Issue: Inaccurate reporting of integrated/dual visits
- Root cause: Clinicians are unsure what visits are considered family planning-eligible encounters (e.g., if a client receives primary care and STI testing in addition to family planning services)
- Solution: Provide a chart audit tool to track and validate potential root causes of underreporting family planning-eligible encounters, and provide education and resources for reporting dual visits
After implementing these solutions, AccessMatters quickly saw notable improvements in their FPAR data. Comparing the first six months of 2024 to the final six months of 2023, on average for learning collaborative participants:
- The number of family planning encounters increased by 10%
- The percent of clients with income unknown decreased by 17%
- The unduplicated client count increased by 8%
To promote continuous improvement, AccessMatters offers a portal where subrecipients can access tools and resources, like a checklist with data collection best practices and the chart audit tool. Are you a grantee looking to work with your subrecipients to improve data quality? Consider starting with a plan-do-study-act process or root cause analysis to figure out why the data issues exist and ways to solve them.