Australian Primary Care Collaboratives Program
IF delivers the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives (APCC) Program. The Program is the first, and largest, quality improvement program of its type in primary healthcare, in Australia. Through the APCC Program general practitioners (GPs) and primary health care providers work together to:
- Improve patient clinical outcomes
- Reduce lifestyle risk factors
- Help maintain good health for those with chronic and complex conditions
- Promote a culture of quality improvement in primary healthcare.
Ultimately, the APCC Program aims to find better ways to provide primary healthcare services to patients through shared learning, peer support, training, education and support systems.
IF has adapted the Breakthrough Series Collaborative methodology and applied it as the framework for the APCC Program. This methodology was first developed in the USA by the Institute of Healthcare Improvement and 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.
Collaborative methodology
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.
Through the APCC Program the framework involves:
- Colleagues getting together at a series of learning workshops
- Participants exchanging ideas, sharing experiences and learning from experts about practical quality improvement skills
- Participants learning how to make and test changes using the Model for Improvement, which includes the 3 Fundamental Questions and Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles
- Through shared learning, teams from a number of health services work together to rapidly test and implement changes that lead to lasting improvements.
The Collaborative methodology promotes rapid change. It works because:
- It is straightforward and structured
- There is dedicated support for participants
- It promotes ‘protected time' (time specifically set aside for quality improvement work), for participants to spend together solving problems as a team
- It is designed to implement change in small manageable cycles and identify where a change actually leads to an improvement.
To find out more about the APCC Program, click here.
Last Updated 10 January 2012
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 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.