Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care’s Academic Innovations Collaborative

Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care's Academic Innovations Collaborative Qualis Health is facilitating primary care redesign in academic medical settings by supporting the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care's Academic Innovations Collaborative (AIC). In partnership with the Center and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Qualis Health is helping 19 Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching practices incorporate patient-centered medical home (PCMH) principles into primary care delivery and medical education.

The eight Change Concepts for Practice Transformation provide the framework for the sites' efforts to transform the way they deliver healthcare to their patients. The Change Concepts support the AIC's four key areas of focus as outlined by the Center: team-based primary care; management and prevention of chronic illnesses; management of patients with multiple illnesses; and patient empowerment and behavior change. In order to develop capable, well-trained agents of change for the future, resident physicians, medical students and other learners are actively involved in the AIC.

Qualis Health provides technical assistance in the form of content expertise, onsite and remote consulting, resource procurement and development, and connections to additional experts in the field of PCMH transformation. Content delivery and technical assistance occur through biannual learning sessions, biannual administrations of the Patient-Centered Medical Home Assessment (PCMH-A) with detailed feedback reports, monthly webinars, monthly written feedback to sites regarding measurement and tests of change, listserv responses, and collaboration with our two partners, the Center and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

As reflected in scores on the Patient-Centered Medical Home Assessment (PCMH-A) conducted by all sites every six months, AIC practices made significant progress in primary care system redesign in the first year of the initiative.
 

Participating practices are drawn from six Harvard Medical School-affiliated institutions: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Children's Hospital Boston, Mount Auburn Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Visit the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care AIC News webpage, which includes highlights, blog posts and progress on the Academic Innovations Collaborative.