Improving Primary Care through Practice Facilitation – Four Exemplar Programs

Improving Primary Care through Practice Facilitation – Four Exemplar Programs

Improving Primary Care through Practice Facilitation – Four Exemplar Programs

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sent this bulletin at 03/13/2013 01:41 PM EDT

Improving Primary Care through Practice Facilitation – Four Exemplar Programs

Primary care practice facilitation (PF) holds promise as an effective and flexible strategy to support medical practices in their ongoing efforts to provide better care, provide more efficient care, and improve the experiences of patients and families. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is exploring the benefits of this strategy and has supported a number of PF initiatives, including the development of a how-to manual on PF, Developing and Running a Practice Facilitation Program for Primary Care Transformation: A How-To Guide.

 As a complement to the how-to manual, AHRQ is pleased to announce the release of four new case studies on leading PF programs, featured here. These case studies highlight each program’s motivation for development, administrative structure, funding, PF approach and activities, hiring and training of staff, and monitoring of program quality. The case studies illustrate how PF programs operate in different organizational and geographic contexts and bring to life the ideas discussed in the how-to manual. These case studies, taken together with the manual, present a framework, and practical direction for those interested in developing PF programs.

The four programs profiled are:

• North Carolina’s Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Practice Support program, which provides PF services focused on primary care quality improvement, and adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records, offered through statewide regional centers.
• The Oklahoma Physicians Resource/ Research Network (OKPRN), which incorporated PF services into an existing Practice-Based Research Network.
• The Safety Net Medical Home Initiative, which illustrates a partnership between Qualis Health (a nonprofit quality improvement consulting firm) and the MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation (a research organization) to provide PF services, training, and technical assistance through a national hub and five Regional Coordinating Centers.
• Vermont Blueprint for Health’s Expansion and Quality Improvement Program (EQuIP), which provides PF services as part of state health care delivery reform efforts.

 In addition to the case studies, we provide a brief overview and have synthesized the lessons learned across the four exemplar PF programs into a companion brief, Lessons Learned from Leading Models of Practice Facilitation.

We hope you will find these products useful in your work. For additional resources and other opportunities for learning and dialogue among organizations that are interested in PF, please visit our website at pcmh.ahrq.gov. To join a listserv for individuals interested in PF, please send an email to PCPF-request@LIST.AHRQ.GOV with “Subscribe” in the subject line.

Learn more about how to improve primary care. Visit AHRQ’s Prevention & Chronic Care Program at: http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/prevenix.htm