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The Collaboratives project |
The Australian Primary Care Collaboratives Program is a three-year, $15 million Government initiative being run through selected divisions. The program is of international significance and is being supported by the National Primary Care Development Team (NPDT) in England.
The Collaboratives Program aims to find better ways to provide primary health care services to patients. The Collaboratives will bring together groups of health care practitioners and organisations to work together through shared learning, peer support, training, education and support systems.
The Collaboratives methodology, designed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in the USA and based on Nolan’s Model of Improvement, 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.
How the Collaboratives will work
A Collaborative consists of a series of learning workshops, informal meetings and communications interspersed with activity periods during which measures common to the participating sites are used to track progress.
Participants share practical change management ideas in both clinical and operational areas that assist in achieving quality improvements. A culture of continuous quality improvement is promoted through effective demonstration of small, rapid cycles of change.
The Collaboratives program will support the division and eight general practices in achieving the goals of the National Primary Care Collaboratives (NPCC) program, which encompass:
- Improving the care of patients with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
- Improving patients’ access to general practice.
- Promoting a culture of on-going quality improvement.
- Enhancing integration between providers in the primary health care sector, and between the primary, acute and residential care sectors, particularly focused on the needs of patients with chronic and complex conditions.
- A clear focus on prevention with better chronic disease management.
Newly appointed coordinator Sandi Hill will work closely with the primary care team in participating general practices on all aspects of the program to enable them to achieve the above goals.
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