2015 Grant Awards

The posters and papers listed below each grant arise from work facilitated through the grant funding.

Testing of System-Level Performance Measures for Inflammatory Arthritis

Principal Investigator: Barber, C. (PDF)
Co-investigators: Lacaille, D; Barnabe, C; Marshall. D; Benseler, S; Hazlewood, G; Mosher, D; Bykerk, V; Burt, J, Thorne, C; Ahluwalia, V; Denning, L; Shiff, N; Katz, S; Homik, J

Project Summary

Over one million Canadians have inflammatory arthritis (IA). There are several types of IA all of which can cause debilitating pain and swelling of the joints. The most common type of IA in adults is rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and in children is juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Early access to appropriate treatment for patients with IA improves their outcomes e.g. a reduction in their symptoms or an improvement in their quality of life. Rheumatologists are the specialist physicians who care for patients with IA. However, in many regions in Canada, high quality care provided in a timely manner is not possible because there is an insufficient number of rheumatologists. In response to this, the Arthritis Alliance of Canada (AAC), an organization representing over 36 Canadian arthritis stakeholder groups, developed ‘Models of Care for Inflammatory Arthritis’. The Models of Care promote best practices for early diagnosis and treatment for IA. In collaboration with arthritis stakeholders across Canada and the AAC, we have developed a set of performance measures to evaluate the Models of Care’s ability to provide access and timely treatment for patients with IA. In this study, we will evaluate 5 performance measures applied in 11 different clinical settings (different models of care and an early arthritis cohort) in 5 Canadian provinces.

We will report on the following measures:

  1. Waiting times for rheumatologist consultation
  2. Percentage of patients seen by a rheumatologist
  3. Percentage of patients seen in yearly follow-up by a rheumatology team member
  4. Percentage of RA patients treated with a disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD)
  5. Time to DMARD therapy in RA

The results of this work will facilitate improved tracking of access to care for patients with IA and foster system improvements in access to services.

Oral Presentation

American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, November 11-16, 2016; Barber, C, Barnabe, C, Hazlewood, G, Schieir, O,  Nadeau, L, Thorne, C,  Ahluwalia, V, Bartlett, S,  Boire, G,  Haraoui, B,  Hitchon, C,  Keystone, E,  Tin, D,  Pope, J, Denning, L, Bykerk, V and Canadian early Arthritis Cohort (CATCH) Investigators; Assessing System-Level Performance Measures for Early Rheumatoid Arthritis in a Large Multicenter Cross-Country Prospective 8-Year Observational Cohort Study

Poster Presentations

Presented at the 2017 Canadian Rheumatology Association meeting and recognized by the CRA Optimal Care Committee for Quality Improvements and Choosing Wisely.

Presented at the 2018 European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR)

Presented at the 2019 Canadian Rheumatology Association meeting.

Published Literature