What are the features of high-performing quality improvement collaboratives? A qualitative case study of a state-wide collaboratives programme.

OBJECTIVES: Despite their widespread use, the evidence base for the effectiveness of quality improvement collaboratives remains mixed. Lack of clarity about 'what good looks like' in collaboratives remains a persistent problem. We aimed to identify the distinctive features of a state-wide collaboratives programme that has demonstrated sustained improvements in quality of care in a range of clinical specialties over a long period. DESIGN: Qualitative case study involving interviews with purposively sampled participants, observations and analysis of documents. SETTING: The Michigan Collaborative Quality Initiatives programme. PARTICIPANTS: 38 participants, including clinicians and managers from 10 collaboratives, and staff from the University of Michigan and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. RESULTS: We identified five features that characterised success in the collaboratives programme: learning from positive deviance; high-quality coordination; high-quality measurement and comparative performance feedback; careful use of motivational levers; and mobilising professional leadership and building community. Rigorous measurement, securing professional leadership and engagement, cultivating a collaborative culture, creating accountability for quality, and relieving participating sites of unnecessary burdens associated with programme participation were all important to high performance. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings offer valuable learning for optimising collaboration-based approaches to improvement in healthcare, with implications for the design, structure and resourcing of quality improvement collaboratives. These findings are likely to be useful to clinicians, managers, policy-makers and health system leaders engaged in multiorganisational approaches to improving quality and safety. ; This study was funded by James McGowan’s NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship (ACF-2016-14-011), by Mary Dixon-Woods’ Wellcome Trust Investigator award (WT097899) and by the Health Foundation’s grant to the University of Cambridge for The ...