Collaboratives - Collaborative Approach

The improvement collaborative is a major new approach for rapidly improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare. The collaborative approach includes:

• quality methods
• change ideas
• a series of meetings to learn about best practices in the area chosen, and to share experiences of making changes

Participants in a collaborative are typically located in different geographic areas and may even work for different healthcare organizations. The collaborative facilitates active sharing of strategies and ideas for improvement among participating teams, so that teams learn from each other and can quickly benefit from successful changes implemented by other teams.

Generally, the participants of a collaborative meet 3 or more times over a period of approximately 18 months, for 2-3 days at a time time. Currently these meetings occur "in person". However, there is a move towards "virtual meetings" which may significantly reduce the costs of this approach.

Participants use a change testing method to plan, implement, and evaluate many small changes in quick succession, such as the "Breakthrough" model of collaborative used in BC, which is the most well known approach and was developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).