Moving beyond measurement to improvement: How can we do that?

Now, more than ever, we need to show the value of team-based primary care. Your team can help by sharing your stories via AFHTO’s QI enablers study. AFHTO members have gained the respect of many through their high and ongoing participation in D2D.  It is not enough to just measure, though. The next step is to use that data to explore if and how relationship-based primary care is also better care, as Starfield’s work suggests. We need to learn more about how teams run their shops and use their data, so we can see what kinds of structures and processes make a difference in performance. This can give us all bigger hints about what to try to get to better outcomes for all teams. If we can pull this off, it would make a very clear case for the value of team-based care. Here is what you can do:

• Keep measuring: This is the fuel for all kinds of fires to support improvement in, demonstrate value of and advocate for teams!
  • Extra demand on your time: none if you are already doing D2D.
• Share your team characteristics data in D2D 5.1: Join the nearly 90 teams who already did this in D2D 5.0.
  • Extra demand on your time: about 10 minutes if you are already doing D2D.
• Tell your peers how you work: Sit down with AFHTO staff to explain how you do what you do in your teams in terms of measuring and improving. This will help teams compare and contrast with one another to find hints to act on, to get to better outcomes.
  • Extra demand on your time: 4 hours for in-person or phone interviews.
• Dive deeper into team functioning: Join a research study looking at what difference integration and collaboration makes on patient outcomes.
  • Extra demand on your time: 15 minutes for each provider who completes a Provider Questionnaire, which includes the Collaborative Practice Assessment Tool (CPAT) and seven demographic questions. NOTE: You don’t need to get every provider to complete the questionnaire, as long as you can get representation from across the key disciplines in your team (family doctors, nursing staff, and IHPs). If you get 20 staff to participate, that’s about 5 hours of staff time – or the first 15 minutes of a team meeting. 

The more data we have, the more we learn. With only a few teams participating, we can’t be sure we’re making the right connections. We need teams from across the province, at all levels of performance and all stages of quality improvement, to help us understand what they are doing and connect it to how they are doing. Want to know more? Send your questions to Carol Mulder, Provincial Lead for the Quality Improvement Decision Support Program.