Australian Primary Care Collaboratives Program (APCCP)

The aims of the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives Program are to improve clinical health outcomes, reduce lifestyle risk factors, maintain health for chronic and complex conditions and improve access to Australian general practice.

Funding for the Collaboratives Program began in 2003-04. Flinders University, operating as the National Primary Care Collaboratives (NPCC), was managing the program between 2004 and December 2007.

The Collaboratives Program was continued and expanded in the 2007-08 Budget with total funding of $34.6 million over four years until June 2011. The Improvement Foundation (Australia) (IFA), which was selected through a competitive open tender process as the implementation organisation, has commenced the management of the Program from January 2008.

The Collaboratives methodology, designed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in the USA, provides a generic quality improvement model that can be applied to achieve incremental, rapid and locally relevant improvements across a broad range of clinical and practice business issues. The current Collaboratives Program is modelled on the successful Primary Care Collaborative Program run by the Improvement Foundation UK, formerly known as the National Primary Care Development Team in the UK, and adapted by the NPCC to the Australian primary health care setting.

The Collaboratives Program comprises a number of key elements:

Program topics: these topics were identified on the basis of their potential for early and concrete results, evidence of best practice, of gaps between current and best practice and examples of how to close the gaps. For each topic, an Expert Reference Panel identified aims, principles and ideas for change, and measures of improvement. The topics for the current Collaboratives Program are diabetes, coronary heart disease and access to general practice services.

Learning workshops: participating general practices attended an orientation day and participated in a series of three learning workshops which provided participants with the opportunity to consider how to improve care and practice systems, and access to ideas and experiences from fellow practices. Workshops were held at the national, local and virtual levels.

Activity periods with local support: during these periods between and after the learning workshops, practices tested and implemented improvements through cycles of small incremental changes. Practices were provided local level support for these activities through Collaborative Program Managers (CPMs) located in participating Divisions of General Practice, and funded through the National Implementation Organisation.

Data reporting and feedback: participating practices submitted monthly data to an online data reporting system, and were provided analysis and feedback on the impact of their improvements over time. Practices were expected to provide data for at least the 18 month period of their participation in the program and were able to continue to submit data after their participation.

Spread and sustainability: the National Implementation Organisation sought to encourage participating Divisions to spread knowledge of the Collaboratives methodology to general practices not otherwise participating in the program, and to encourage participating Divisions to apply their knowledge of the methodology to other topic areas, such as other diseases.

Since the beginning of the program, a total of 42 Divisions of General Practice and about 600 general practices have participated in the Collaboratives Program, comprising about 500 general practices in national workshops and the remaining general practices in local and virtual workshops.

Information is also available at the National Primary Care Collaboratives' website at www.npcc.com.au and the Improvement Foundation (Australia) website at www.improve.org.au.