The need for continuous quality assessment for providing optimal comprehensive care for patients with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency

Background: Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) is an orphan disease that mainly affecting the liver and the lung. This creates difficulties to ensure that comprehensive care is administered to both organ systems. Past assessments of care delivered to patients with AATD demonstrated that improvements are needed. For that reason, we reassessed a population of patients with AATD in a large health care system to see if past findings affected present care. Methods: We performed electronic health record (EHR) reviews on all patients with documented AATD and confirmed the diagnosis by evidence of genotyping. We then selected the patients with the ZZ genotype to review comprehensive care. We further compared the findings in patients treated by different specialists (allergy immunology, gastroenterology, and pulmonary). The data were captured and assessed by using a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and data bases. REDCap. Results: We found a total of 329 patients with diagnostic codes for AATD, of these, 203 patients had a confirmed abnormal genotype. Confirmed genotypes were MZ (n = 69), ZZ (n = 48), MS (n = 22), SZ (n = 22). Further focus was applied to the care of the ZZ population secondary to a predisposition to potential severe lung and liver disease. The findings suggest that care can be improved no matter which specialist cares for the patient. Conclusion: Our study demonstrated that all three subspecialty groups had room for improvement in providing care to patients with AATD. Our study further demonstrated the need for recurrent quality-assurance programs that may be aided by care suggestions built into the EHR.