Primary health care services often struggle to sustain a culture of continuous improvement. How many times do we see the need for significant change identified, yet primary health organisations revert back to the status quo much to the disappointment of passionate leaders and managers? Early improvements are often made, but sustaining action and managing change across a health service is challenging.

Understanding Sustainable Quality Improvement

Sustainable quality improvement requires more than implementing a one-off change. Healthcare organisations need practical systems that support continuous learning, staff engagement, measurement, and adaptation. Using structured quality improvement strategies can help organisations identify performance gaps and embed changes that continue to deliver value over time.

Larter uses a number of approaches and tools to work with services to drive sustainable quality improvement.

One of these tools is the Healthcare Organisational Strategy for Improvement Matrix (OSIM) from Better Care Victoria. We use the OSIM to determine appetite for change and improvement within an organisation and implement change strategies that will sustain quality improvement.

The OSIM provides a practical framework for thinking about the enablers and barriers to quality improvement and how to align quality improvement efforts with strategic priorities and team priorities. This strategic approach supports a quality culture embedded across all levels of an organisation.

Using Evidence to Strengthen Healthcare Improvement

Effective improvement initiatives should be informed by evidence, data, and the experiences of people delivering and receiving services. Healthcare program evaluation can help organisations assess whether improvement activities are achieving their intended outcomes, identify barriers to implementation, and determine where further changes may be required.

Building Improvement Into Health Service Planning

For quality improvement to have a lasting impact, it needs to align with broader organisational goals and service priorities. Integrating improvement activities into health service planning can help organisations prioritise resources, respond to emerging needs, and create a more consistent approach to improving healthcare delivery.

We work with key stakeholders to complete a self-assessment tool that typically involves a combination of Executives, Board members, General Managers, Clinical Leads, and representation from quality, safety, risk and improvement, innovation and redesign, workforce, corporate services teams, as well as consumer representatives where appropriate.

The OSIM tool focuses on the following four areas:

• organisational systems and structures
• workforce capability and development
• results and system impact
• culture and behaviours

 

We use the results to determine an organisation’s improvement capability in each of the four areas. The process also identifies strengths and challenges across the healthcare services. The OSIM assessment outcomes, priorities and strategically-aligned actions can then be developed into an improvement and innovation plan that translates aspirational goals into tangible and accountable actions, and helps embed continuous quality improvement into an ongoing cycle.

Larter supported a community based palliative care organisation in Victoria to use the OSIM framework to develop a whole-of-organisation plan for implementing a range of change initiatives. We translated the strategic insights gained during the self-assessment process into an action plan. This included outlining an approach for maintaining ongoing capability in best practice governance, innovation and change leadership to maintain high performance in an increasingly competitive environment, as well as ways to develop new partnerships with other service providers and strengthen existing ones.

Larter can help determine if your health practice could benefit from an innovative tool to make sustainable continuous improvements.