SAT-571 Improving Diabetic Eye Exam Rates in an Academic Endocrinology Clinic

Abstract Disclosure: A.L. Morvant: None. M. Gonzalez: None. R. Florian: None. J. Liu: None. K. Sawyer: None. H. Ayesh: None. C. DeClue: None. S. Jani: None. M. Rhodes: None. C.D. Hendrickson: None. Introduction: Persons with diabetes are at increased risk of retinopathy, and diabetes-related eye complications are the primary cause of blindness among working-age adults in the U.S. Annual screening with diabetic eye exams (DEE) is broadly recommended, yet completion rates in the U.S. only range between 26-54%. We recognized low DEE completion rates in our specialized diabetes-care clinic and aimed to improve these. This report highlights the different strategies used to improve completion of annual screenings and capture of completed exams. Methods: We set a goal to improve DEE completion from 34.9% to 40% for the academic year 2024-2025. A process map was created to identify key drivers and potential interventions. Implemented interventions included sending virtual outreach messages to 324 patients who were overdue in DEE screening and had an active ophthalmology referral to schedule an exam. The second intervention was to send a message to 4,842 patients who were overdue but did not have an active referral. Missed opportunities to capture data were identified, which led to adding questions about DEE completion to pre-visit patient surveys as the third intervention. The electronic health record (EHR) functionality options were adjusted to enable capturing the responses in the DEE completion rate. Results: Data on the percentage of patients with an updated DEE was collected from our clinic from July 2024 to December 2024. After the first two interventions, the percentage of patients with a documented up-to-date DEE increased from 34.9% to 37.1%. After the third intervention of adding DEE-related questions to the pre-visit patient survey and using these responses to update the DEE completion data, the percentage of patients with a documented up-to-date DEE increased from 37.1% to 45.7% after 17 weeks. Conclusion: We implemented three interventions to improve DEE performance in our specialty clinic. We found that the most effective was adding DEE screening questions to our pre-visit patient surveys. This led to a dramatic increase in capturing patients with updated DEE, with completion rates increasing from 37.1% to 45.7%. The interventions of sending reminder messages to patients who were overdue for DEE were less successful, as the DEE completion rate only increased from 34.9% to 37.1%. This could be due to less urgency from patients to act upon messages between appointments in comparison to patient willingness to input data about a completed DEE. Our project demonstrated some of the benefits of utilizing EHR tools to improve DEE completion rates, by reminding patients to obtain an updated exam and by improving data capture of exams already completed. Next proposed steps to further improve DEE performance at our specialty clinic include implementing the use of office-based retina cameras to capture overdue patients during their appointments. Presentation: Saturday, July 12, 2025