Innovating Quality of Care in Community Health Centres from the perspective of a network organization

Tom Meeus

Setting:

The Association of Community Health Centers (AoCHC) overarches a diverse set of 37 primary care practices in Flanders and Brussels. A Community Health Center (CHC) strives for more equity in health care and therefore provides patient-oriented, integrated, continuous, accessible and high-quality primary health care. In a CHC an interdisciplinary care team works together based on a community-oriented vision, with attention to health promotion for all. The centers are funded via a needs-based capitation model.

Target group:

Team members active in a CHC

Description of the innovative practice or project:

In 2013, the AoCHC launched a quality project aiming to foster attention for quality of care in the sector. This project was performed in collaboration with the sector and aimed to
1. Draft definitions and measurable criteria for the essential building blocks of a CHC, resulting in two self-assessment tools and several thematic coaching frameworks
2. Provide support to implement quality improvement through knowledge building and coaching, by developing an online database for the exchange of good practices
3. Structurally anchor quality thinking within the management of each CHC.

Evaluation:

We assessed the project on the use of the developed tools. It was hard to spread the enthusiasm from early adopters to the entire CHC sector. However, persistence leads to gradual integration of quality of care into daily practice. The challenge remains to implement a quality managementsystem in each CHC, ensuring that the various operations are comparable at the sector level.

Next Steps:

The AoCHC is initiating a sector-wide exploration of adapting EFQM principles into a versatile quality system tailored to the needs of each member-CHC.

Lessons learned:

- Quality improvement should be an integrated part of care provision
- Focus on monitoring goals
- Align tools with daily operations
- Improvement projects are best situated within a management strategy
- Quality improvement thrives from practical experiences
- Developing a quality culture is as important

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