Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (Apr 2024)

175 Benchmarking MICHR’s Clinical and Translational Science production as a continuous quality improvement initiative.

  • Elias Samuels,
  • Ellen Champagne

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2024.166
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8
pp. 52 – 53

Abstract

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OBJECTIVES/GOALS: In line with NCATS funding requirements, the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR) established a continuous quality improvement (CQI) process and used the process to guide the implementation of a benchmarking project to evaluate and set goals for MICHR’s production of Clinical and Translational Science manuscripts. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We aimed to increase the number of Clinical and Translational Science papers MICHR produces and to set a reasonable goal for improvement. Benchmarking was used to obtain a baseline and inform the identification of a reasonable goal for improvement. 11 Peer institutions were identified with similar funding levels. 1,225 Publications from 2022 for all 12 CTSAs were obtained from NIH Reporter. All publications were reviewed by title to identify probable CTS content. Two staff reviewers confirmed a total of 108 CTS publications across all CTSAs, and coded each paper to characterize the theoretical approach, method (quantitative and/or qualitative), analytic method and topic. All publications that were selected for benchmarking were also tracked and compared using Altmetrics for Institutions and Overton platforms. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: A total of 108 CTS publications were produced by 12 benchmarked CTSAs in 2022; of those, 70% (77) regarded research infrastructure, 37% (41) regarded research methods, and 15% (16) regarded clinical care. Over half, 53% (58), of the benchmarked papers are empirical research papers; of those, 67% (39) used quantitative methods, 28% (16) used qualitative methods, and 5% (3) used mixed methods. A clear majority of the benchmarked papers, 70% (76), provided only descriptive analyses, 18% (19) provided inferential analyses, and 12% (13) provided predictive analyses. We identified an opportunity to produce more manuscripts with descriptive analyses of research infrastructure. In the long-term, we saw an opportunity to produce predictive analyses of translational initiatives designed to impact clinical care. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The benchmarking results helped MICHR identify goals for its production of Clinical and Translational Science to fill gaps in the field. Expanding the scope of this benchmarking project might achieve greater interrater reliability using larger representative sets of publications drawn from institutions across the CTSA Consortium.