Although the patient-centered medical home endorses quality improvement principles, methods for supporting ongoing, systematic primary care quality improvement have not been evaluated. We introduced primary care quality councils at six Veterans Health Administration sites as an organizational intervention with three key design elements: (a) fostering interdisciplinary quality improvement leadership, (b) establishing a structured quality improvement process, and (c) facilitating organizationally aligned frontline quality improvement innovation.,Our evaluation objectives were to (a) assess design element implementation, (b) describe implementation barriers and facilitators, and (c) assess successful quality improvement project completion and spread.,We analyzed administrative records and conducted interviews with 85 organizational leaders. We developed and applied criteria for assessing design element implementation using hybrid deductive/inductive analytic techniques.,All quality councils implemented interdisciplinary leadership and a structured quality improvement process, and all but one completed at least one quality improvement project and a toolkit for spreading improvements. Quality councils were perceived as most effective when service line leaders had well-functioning interdisciplinary communication. Matching positions within leadership hierarchies with appropriate supportive roles facilitated frontline quality improvement efforts. Two key resources were (a) a dedicated internal facilitator with project management, data collection, and presentation skills and (b) support for preparing customized data reports for identifying and addressing practice level quality issues.,Overall, quality councils successfully cultivated interdisciplinary, multilevel primary care quality improvement leadership with accountability mechanisms and generated frontline innovations suitable for spread. Practice level performance data and quality improvement project management support were critical.,In order to successfully facilitate systematic, sustainable primary care quality improvement, regional and executive health care system leaders should engage interdisciplinary practice level leadership in a priority-setting process that encourages frontline innovation and establish local structures such as quality councils to coordinate quality improvement initiatives, ensure accountability, and promote spread of best practices.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare systems and their primary care practices are redesigning to achieve goals identified in Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) models such as Veterans Affairs (VA)'s Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT). Implementation of these models, however, requires major transformation. Evidence-Based Quality Improvement (EBQI) is a multi-level approach for supporting organizational change and innovation spread. OBJECTIVE: To describe EBQI as an approach for promoting VA's PACT and to assess initial implementation of planned EBQI elements. DESIGN: Descriptive. PARTICIPANTS: Regional and local interdisciplinary clinical leaders, patient representatives, Quality Council Coordinators, practicing primary care clinicians and staff, and researchers from six demonstration site practices in three local healthcare systems in one VA region. INTERVENTION: EBQI promotes bottom-up local innovation and spread within top-down organizational priorities. EBQI innovations are supported by a research-clinical partnership, use continuous quality improvement methods, and are developed in regional demonstration sites. APPROACH: We developed a logic model for EBQI for PACT (EBQI-PACT) with inputs, outputs, and expected outcomes. We describe implementation of logic model outputs over 18 months, using qualitative data from 84 key stakeholders (104 interviews from two waves) and review of study documents. RESULTS: Nearly all implementation elements of the EBQI-PACT logic model were fully or partially implemented. Elements not fully achieved included patient engagement in Quality Councils (4/6) and consistent local primary care practice interdisciplinary leadership (4/6). Fourteen of 15 regionally approved innovation projects have been completed, three have undergone initial spread, five are prepared to spread, and two have completed toolkits that have been pretested in two to three sites and are now ready for external spread. DISCUSSION: EBQI-PACT has been feasible to implement in three participating healthcare systems in one VA region. Further development of methods for engaging patients in care design and for promoting interdisciplinary leadership is needed.

Collaborative care models for depression in primary care are effective and cost-effective, but difficult to spread to new sites. Translating Initiatives for Depression into Effective Solutions (TIDES) is an initiative to promote evidence-based collaborative care in the U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA). Social marketing applies marketing techniques to promote positive behavior change. Described in this paper, TIDES used a social marketing approach to foster national spread of collaborative care models. TIDES social marketing approach The approach relied on a sequential model of behavior change and explicit attention to audience segmentation. Segments included VHA national leadership, Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) regional leadership, facility managers, frontline providers, and veterans. TIDES communications, materials and messages targeted each segment, guided by an overall marketing plan. Depression collaborative care based on the TIDES model was adopted by VHA as part of the new Primary Care Mental Health Initiative and associated policies. It is currently in use in more than 50 primary care practices across the United States, and continues to spread, suggesting success for its social marketing-based dissemination strategy. Discussion and conclusions Development, execution and evaluation of the TIDES marketing effort shows that social marketing is a promising approach for promoting implementation of evidence-based interventions in integrated healthcare systems.

Although health care organizations seeking to improve quality often must change the system for delivering care, there is little available evidence on how to educate staff and providers about this change. As part of a 2002-2003 Veterans Health Administration multisite project using collaborative care to improve the management of depression, the authors implemented the Translating Initiatives for Depression into Effective Solutions (TIDES) program. Five steps were followed for teaching systems-based practice: (1) determine providers' educational needs (through administrative data, expert opinion, and provider discussion), (2) develop educational materials (based on needs assessed), (3) help each of seven sites develop an educational intervention, (4) implement the intervention, and (5) monitor the intervention's effectiveness. Sites relied primarily on passive educational strategies. There was variable implementation of the different components (e.g., lecture, educational outreach). No site chose to write up its education plan, as was suggested. The authors thus suggest that the educational model was successful at identifying providers' needs and creating appropriate materials, because the program was not advertised in other ways and because almost all providers referred patients to the program. However, the educational model was only partially successful at getting sites to develop and implement an educational plan, although provider behavior did change. Overall, the program was somewhat effective at teaching systems-based practice. The authors believe the best way to enhance effectiveness is to build education into the system rather than rely on a separate system for education.