Supportive Leadership Structure

Toolkit for Implementing the Chronic Care Model in an Academic Environment

The successful implementation of the Chronic Care Model at the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center is credited to the center's multisite focus and a strong leadership structure. Supportive leaders ensured teams had the resources they needed to accomplish their goals.

Supportive Leadership Structure at the University of Cincinnati

The Senior Leadership Group brought together high-ranking administrators and medical faculty from the five sites. Members of the group were committed to:

• Removing institutional barriers to collaborative objectives.
• Enhancing communication across teams.
• Providing motivation, resources, staffing, and budgetary support.

Specific examples of the support that Senior Leadership Group provided included:

• Financing the purchase and hosting, including training and technical assistance, of a disease registry.
• Facilitating links between the registry and hospital information systems.
• Facilitating links between the registry and laboratory vendor, enabling lab data to be imported into the registry.
• Hiring or reassigning staff in response to the needs of the team.
• Purchasing additional computers and printers.
• Funding team participation in collaborative activities and national meetings.
• Assigning a quality improvement Six Sigma blackbelt to help one of the teams that needed special assistance.
• Facilitating the organizational approval for one team to do onsite HbA1c testing

Return to Document