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Scottish Primary Care Collaborative (SPCC)
The Scottish Primary Care Collaborative was delivered as a partnership program between UKIF and the Centre for Change and Innovation (CCI) at the Scottish Executive.
The SPCC was designed to remodel the way general practice works to improve access and reduce delays for patients, and also improve outcomes for people with chronic conditions.
Approximately 500 general practices participated in the SPCC between 2003 and 2009. The program provided assistance to all participating practices in the redesign of their systems and their ways of working.
Topics included:
- diabetes
- coronary heart disease
- chronic kidney disease
The Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Phase of the SPCC focused on improving patient access to GPs and improving the management of care for people with diabetes. The first wave of 98 practices in Phase I completed their 24 months of the program in September 2005; the second wave began in May 2004 and finished in May 2006. Phase I of the program showed significant improvements through the use of the Collaborative methodology.
Phase II of the SPCC began in May 2005 with 89 practices focusing on improving access for patients and improving secondary prevention of Coronary Heart Disease. A further 63 practices joined the second wave of Phase II which began in May 2006.
The final wave of the SPCC began in March 2007 with 62 practices. Similar to the previous waves, participants again worked towards improvements in patient access to GP services, but alternatively focused on improving the management of care for people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).
Last Updated 27 October 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.