Community and Health Research Unit

The latest in the CaHRU and Lincoln Institute for Health Improvement Science and Research Methods seminar series was given by Professor Siriwardena on ‘Quality Improvement Collaboratives (QICs): theory design and effects on 28 February 2018. The CaHRU team have led three large scale collaboratives over the past 12 years, including Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment (REST), the Ambulance Services Cardiovascular Quality Initiative (ASCQI) and most recently Scaling up PINCER (a pharmacist and information technology intervention to reduce potential clinically important prescribing errors in general practice.

QICs are an organised, multifaceted approach to quality improvement involving five essential features: a specified topic; clinical experts and experts in quality improvement provide ideas and support for improvement; multi-professional teams from multiple sites participate; using a model for improvement (measurement, change, feedback); and a collaborative process involves series of structured activities. The talk described how QICs have been used to implement healthcare interventions at scale and referred to a recent systematic review suggesting that over 4 out of 5 reported improvement in one or more outcomes although the quality of studies was variably poor.

QICs were described in terms of their common features: a logic model and theory of change; the complex (pragmatic) contexts of the intervention, setting and participants; and the variation in effects and changes that the intervention can or will undergo during the process of the collaborative. It was proposed that there were different types of collaborative based on their purpose which could be for intervention development, increasing reliability of evidence based processes, or scaling up evidence based complex interventions. It was argued that reviews of QICs should consider these different purposes when describing the outcomes and effects of QICs.

By Professor Niro Siriwardena[su_document url=”https://communityandhealth.dev.lincoln.ac.uk/files/2018/03/QICs_Siriwardena.pdf” width=”660″ responsive=”no”]Multi-morbidity, goal-oriented care, the community and equity[/su_document]

Prof Niro Siriwardena spoke at the first engagement event of a new multi-organisational general practice quality improvement collaborative at the Stratford Olympic Park this February. The collaborative led by Professor Martin Marshall and his team at University College London, under the auspices of the Guttmann Academic Partnership launched in 2014, will involve working with NHS Newham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and UCL Partners to support safer prescribing in Newham general practice.

Professor Siriwardena gave an introduction to quality improvement science approaches in his talk ‘How can QI methods in general help to solve these [safety] challenges?’ at the inaugural meeting together with other experts in collaboratives, including Prof Marshall and Dr Neil Houston from NHS Scotland, and local general practitioners. The talk was based on experience from regional and national quality improvement collaboratives such as the Resources for Effective Sleep Treatment project and the Ambulance Services cardiovascular Quality Initiative. Prof Siriwardena has recently been part of a team awarded funding from the Health Foundation for a new regional collaborative aimed at ‘Improving prescribing safety in general practices in the East Midlands through the PINCER intervention.’

The engagement event took place at the Sir Ludwig Guttman Health and Well Being Centre situated in the Olympic Park in Stratford, originally designed as the medical practice for the London 2012 Summer Olympics. It was well attended by general practitioners, patients and academic experts supporting the initiative and is part of the impact activity of CaHRU’s new research centre.