eCollaborative - 21st Century Patient Care and Self Management
IF has been contracted by the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) to deliver a new Collaborative wave focused on improving chronic disease care and self management using innovative new technology.
What is the ‘eCollaborative’ Wave?
The Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) will be launched by NEHTA in Australia in 2012. The eCollaborative aims to support general practices and health services to be ready for the PCEHR when it becomes operational.The eCollaborative Wave will use the highly successful Collaboratives methodology, which has been implemented through the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives (APCC) Program since 2004. This wave is open exclusively to general practices and health services that have previously participated in the APCC Program and, as teams will already be familiar with Collaboratives Methodology, the workshops will not revisit the fundamentals in depth.
Improving patient outcomes
Participants will learn about using eHealth technologies to support patient self management, and learn the skills and get support to:
- Achieve better outcomes for patients with chronic disease
- Support better patient self management
- Better integrate care teams
- Be ready for the PCEHR national infrastructure when it becomes operational.
Collaboratives methodology
The Collaboratives methodology is proven to be highly effective in achieving large scale systems change and demonstrating measurable outcomes. It 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.Click here to find out more about the Collaboratives methodology.
Engaging patients
An innovative aspect of this wave is the engagement of patients through local patient engagement workshops, which will be directly supported by IF. These workshops will support practice and health services, to better understand patients’ experiences with the technology and identify opportunities for innovation.
Workshop dates
The eCollaborative Wave will be delivered via a hybrid model consisting of two national ‘face to face’ workshops and three virtually based workshops. A short orientation session will be delivered virtually, commencing in November. Both a GP and practice staff member are required to attend orientation and all learning workshops (LW), which will be held on the following dates:
- LW1 (virtual*), delivered in the week of 12 December 2011
- LW2 (national), Saturday 18 February 2012
- LW3 (virtual*), delivered in the week of 16 April 2012
- LW4 (national), Saturday 23 June 2012LW5 (virtual*), delivered in the week of 20 August 2012
*Virtual workshops will be delivered via webinar over several streams with dates and times to be confirmed.
To view the eCollaborative Medicare Local and Divsion of General Practice Travel Policy click here.
To view the eCollaboratives flyer click here.
For more information about the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record visit the NEHTA website at http://www.nehta.gov.au/ehealth-implementation/what-is-a-pcher
Last Updated 19 March 2012
What is the Model for Improvement?
The Model for Improvement provides a framework for developing, testing and implementing changes. It helps to break down a change effort into small, manageable chunks which are then tested to ensure that things are improving and that no effort is wasted. It is always worth remembering that while every improvement is certainly a change, every change is not an improvement.
The Model for Improvement consists of two equal parts; the first part, the “thinking part”, consists of three fundamental questions to guide improvement work:
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- How will we know that a change is an improvement?
- What changes can we make that will result in an improvement?
For more information about the Model for Improvement visit: http://apcc.org.au/about_the_APCC/the_model_for_improvement/
What is the Collaborative Methodology?
Adapted from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s Breakthrough Series Collaborative methodology, in the Australian context, the Collaborative methodology is used as a framework for the APCC Program. This methodology has been applied to a wide range of management challenges. Originally applied to healthcare systems in the USA, it has since been adopted in other countries, including the UK, Scotland, Canada and New Zealand.
The Collaborative methodology is proven to be highly effective in achieving large scale systems change and demonstrating measurable outcomes. It 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.