Qualis Health: Overview

Washington State Collaborative To Improve Health

About the Washington State Collaborative (WSC)

The Washington State Collaborative to Improve Health helps busy medical practices improve their systems of care for patients with chronic disease. A collaborative is a learning process where several medical teams work to improve the quality of care delivered by their practices. Pediatric and primary care practices of all sizes are encouraged to apply. First preference, however, will be given to small practices of five or fewer providers, and first-time participants.

WSC provides structured opportunities to learn from peers as well as national and local experts. Clinical teams:

Implement changes (such as charting revisions, modified patient education tools, or supplementing one-on-one care with group visits) and measure their effects (through a patient registry or other evaluation method)
Share their experiences to accelerate learning
Spread the resulting best practices throughout their systems

More than 120 clinical teams have taken part in previous sessions—improving quality of care and increasing job satisfaction along the way.

Scheduled Events

MFI and Chronic Care Model Training Webinar: April 17, 2008
Learning Session 1: May 15, 2008
Learning Session 2: November 5, 2008
Outcomes Congress: May 5, 2009

Recognition

Many organizations and individuals contributed to the development of the Washington State Collaborative to Improve Health (WSC). We would like to recognize the following organizations and individuals for providing direction, funding, and expertise:

The Washington State Department of Health supports the WSC through the Diabetes Prevention and Control Program, Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program, and Washington State Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, under cooperative agreements with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Qualis Health, a not-for-profit healthcare quality improvement organization with headquarters in Washington State.

Improving Chronic Illness Care (ICIC) is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based at the MacColl Institute for Healthcare Innovation at the Center for Health Studies, Group Health Cooperative. Experts from this program provide consultation and technical support for the WSC. In addition, ICIC helped develop the framework for the diabetes track.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) developed the Collaborative learning methodology with colleagues from Associates in Process Improvement. The WSC is modeled after the IHI Breakthrough Series. In addition, IHI helped develop the framework for the diabetes track.

The Bureau of Primary Health Care Diabetes Collaboratives has shared their experiences and materials.

Teams and health plans that participated in the five previous collaboratives shared their experiences and lessons learned. Their comments and feedback have been incorporated into this year’s plan.

Collaborative Advisory Council:

Aetna
Children’s Health Improvement Collaborative
GlaxoSmithKline
Northwest Physicians Network
Premera Blue Cross
Puget Sound Health Alliance
Qualis Health
Regence BlueShield
University of Washington
Washington Academy of Family Physicians
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services
Washington State Health Care Authority