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Long Term Conditions, National Primary Care Collaborative
The National Primary Care Collaborative (the first of UK Improvement Foundation programs) was launched in June 2000. It was the world’s largest health improvement program at the time, covering over 5,000 general practices and almost 32 million patients.
Key points
The Collaborative was rolled out in three phases and covered the following topics:
- improving access to primary care (Advanced Access)
- secondary prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD)
- the commissioning of secondary care services
- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The collaborative aimed to support front-line clinicians and PCT managers in using skills and techniques to deliver significant improvements in long-term conditions. The specific focus was on the management of diabetes and COPD, although much of the learning can be transposed to other chronic diseases. Key elements of the program were:
- patient and carer participation
- strong emphasis on self-care
- development of robust integrated pathways between primary and secondary care
- development of case management at practice level
- desire to reduce unplanned hospital admissions and subsequent length of inpatient stay.
- It produced quick results, including dramatic reductions in waiting times and improvements in patient care.
Last Updated 04 July 2011
What is the Model for Improvement?
The Model for Improvement provides a framework for developing, testing and implementing changes. It helps to break down a change effort into small, manageable chunks which are then tested to ensure that things are improving and that no effort is wasted. It is always worth remembering that while every improvement is certainly a change, every change is not an improvement.
The Model for Improvement consists of two equal parts; the first part, the “thinking part”, consists of three fundamental questions to guide improvement work:
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- How will we know that a change is an improvement?
- What changes can we make that will result in an improvement?
For more information about the Model for Improvement visit: http://apcc.org.au/about_the_APCC/the_model_for_improvement/
What is a Collaborative program?
A Collaborative is an improvement method that relies on the distribution and adaptation of existing knowledge to multiple settings, to achieve a common aim. Healthcare Collaboratives are built on a tried and tested method, developed in the USA , which has been applied to a wide range of management challenges. It was originally applied to healthcare systems by the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in the USA, and has been adopted in other countries. A Collaborative is not a research project, a set of conferences or a passive exercise. A Collaborative is about actually doing and improving.
What is the Collaborative Methodology?
Adapted from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s Breakthrough Series Collaborative methodology, in the Australian context, the Collaborative methodology is used as a framework for the APCC Program. This methodology has been applied to a wide range of management challenges. Originally applied to healthcare systems in the USA, it has since been adopted in other countries, including the UK, Scotland, Canada and New Zealand.
The Collaborative methodology is proven to be highly effective in achieving large scale systems change and demonstrating measurable outcomes. It provides a generic quality improvement model that can be applied to achieve incremental, rapid and locally relevant improvements across a broad range of clinical and practice business issues.