Six Building Blocks Implementation

Seeking Primary Care Practices To Participate in Opioid QI Project

An AHRQ-funded research organization, Abt Associates, is recruiting a diverse set of practices to participate in the “Six Building Blocks Team Approach to Improve Opioid Management in Primary Care” project. An anticipated 15 primary care practices will implement the Six Building Blocks toolkit. The project will also build further understanding about how to most effectively implement the Six Building Blocks’ resources.

What are the benefits to participating practices?  

• Obtain guidance and resources on how to implement opioid management practices.
• Obtain a $2,500/practice honorarium to offset costs of producing measures, monitoring progress, and sharing documents for the Abt team to evaluate implementation in your practice.
• Obtain technical assistance and support from experts who have worked with many practices to improve opioid management. Experts will provide guidance in areas such as how to engage clinicians and how to have difficult conversations with patients.

What is requested of participating practice sites?

• Review the Six Building Blocks at: https://www.improvingopioidcare.org/.
• Examine each of the Six Building Blocks areas (e.g., Leadership and Consensus; Policies, Patient Agreements, and Workflows) and determine what your practice should implement or adapt to improve opioid management. Practices that have already adopted some opioid management practices can implement selected Six Building Blocks strategies to augment existing efforts.
• Begin implementation in early 2019, for up to 18 months.
• Collect and provide applicable metrics and data to monitor your progress before and after implementing the Six Building Blocks.
• Participate in periodic interviews/surveys for evaluation purposes.

If you want to learn more or would like to participate in this project, contact Olivia Bacon at olivia_bacon@abtassoc.com.

This project is funded by AHRQ and led by Sarah Shoemaker-Hunt, Ph.D., Pharm.D., Abt Associates, in partnership with Michael Parchman, M.D., M.P.H., Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, and Laura-Mae Baldwin, M.D., and  Brooke Ike, M.P.H., University of Washington.