A Collaborative Approach to a Chronic Care Problem

Quality improvement collaboratives (QICs) are popular vehicles for supporting healthcare improvement; however, the effectiveness of these models and the factors associated with their success are not fully understood. This paper presents a QIC in the Canadian context, where provincial healthcare systems have historically faced difficulty in transcending their structural and political limitations as well as moving from reactive models of care (prioritizing illness treatment in a hospital-reliant system) to more proactive ones (prioritizing population health in a primary care-based system). In March 2012, in a move that has been described as "unprecedented," 17 health regions across four provinces in Atlantic Canada, together with the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement (CFHI), developed a collaborative to improve chronic disease prevention and management. This paper introduces the Atlantic Healthcare Collaboration for Innovation and Improvement in Chronic Disease (AHC), reflecting on the experience of developing and implementing the model, which involved teams of front-line clinicians and managers working with CFHI faculty, coaches and staff to assess, design, implement, evaluate and share healthcare improvements for people living with chronic diseases. The paper shares key results and lessons learned from the AHC QIC experience, thus far, for improving chronic disease prevention and management in healthcare in Canada.