Collaboratives and Other Opportunities to Participate

Engaging health care providers and family caregiver organizations in targeted efforts to implement Next Step in Care materials is an essential element of the campaign.

A current focus is on creating quality improvement collaboratives, which are proving effective in changing practice to improve patient safety and clinical care in a variety of health care settings, including hospitals, nursing homes, and home care agencies. In the collaborative model, pioneered by the Institute for Health Improvement, multidisciplinary teams from several different facilities are working together over the course of 15 months to develop, test, and evaluate changes in practice.  The teams selected the problems they are focusing on, have been meeting periodically for faculty-led learning sessions, are communicating between learning sessions, are collecting data, and are reporting on their findings and experiences.

In these Next Step in Care collaboratives, sponsored by United Hospital Fund and limited to the New York area, teams from hospitals, rehab units in nursing homes, and home care agencies are working within their own setting or across settings on specific ways to use Next Step in Care materials to create more effective processes of including family caregivers in transition planning and implementation. United Hospital Fund has extensive experience with the collaborative model focused on palliative care and, in partnership with the Greater New York Hospital Association, on infection control.

In addition, United Hospital Fund is using training resources—webinars, website updates, and presentations at conferences—to help providers introduce Next Step in Care materials into their standard practice. Outreach and training directed to family caregiver and consumer organizations is helping them use Next Step in Care materials with their constituencies.
 

Campaign Goals
Defining the Issue
Developing Next Step in Care
United Hospital Fund Family Caregiving Chronology
Staff and Funders