Home » About Us » Company Profile » United Kingdom Improvement Foundation (UK IF) » Saskatchewan Primary Care Collaborative
Saskatchewan Primary Care Collaborative
The UK IF supported the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council (HQC) to run their first Collaborative in Saskatchewan’s primary care setting. This was the first time the entire province embarked on a quality improvement initiative of this scale. The focus of the Collaborative was on improving quality of care in the areas of:
- coronary heart disease
- diabetes
- improving access to primary care practices.
Wave one of the Collaborative was held in November 2005 - February 2008. Wave two commenced November 2006 - March 2009.
The Collaborative was delivered in a partnership which included all 13 health regions, 73 family physician practices (including office staff), First Nations organisations, and community health care providers, among others.
Since the launch of the initiative in November 2005, thousands of people living with diabetes and CAD are receiving better care and experiencing improved health outcomes.
Last Updated 11 August 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.