Chapter 12. Improvement Support

Regional Coalition Collaboration Guide

Often stakeholders are uneasy about the effect negative data will have on them. Providing participants with tools and resources for improving low ratings is an important aspect of measuring and reporting data. Without this component, measures can appear punitive to stakeholders and may discourage participation.

As the following three examples indicate, some Better Quality Information sites focus exclusively on data collection, analysis, and reporting. Other sites partner with quality improvement groups that use the data to help stakeholders develop and implement quality improvement methods.

  • The California Cooperative Healthcare Reporting Initiative, founded and now partners with the California Quality Collaborative to work with physician groups and health plans to share lessons learned, conduct performance improvement projects, and provide other quality improvement services.
  • Massachusetts Health Quality Partners works with the Massachusetts Quality Improvement Organization and the Massachusetts Medical Society to develop a quality improvement curriculum. Using the coalition's data, the curriculum will integrate improvements in clinical quality with improvements in patient experience.
  • The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality shares data with organizations before public release and invites the organization to add an addendum to the collaborative's announcement about how the information will affect the organization. The Wisconsin collaborative then sponsors educational sessions and activities as a means of sharing best practices to help drive improvement. In addition, the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality's Cardiac Collaborative consists of seven organizations that have voluntarily come together to drive improvement in both the quality and cost of revascularization services in their institutions.
  • The Center for Health Information and Research uses the principle of prior approval by potentially identified data partners on all proposed research using Arizona HealthQuery data, but no data partner has control over results once approval is granted.

Whichever emphasis a new coalition wants to have, it is important to decide early whether it will be reporting driven or improvement driven. This decision will help to clarify the coalition's ultimate mission and identify organizations that can help assist with quality improvement (for example, Quality Improvement Organizations).

Page last reviewed April 2008
Internet Citation: Chapter 12. Improvement Support: Regional Coalition Collaboration Guide. April 2008. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://archive.ahrq.gov/professionals/quality-patient-safety/quality-resources/tools/collabguide/collabguide12.html