Quality improvement collaboratives are increasingly
being used in many countries to achieve rapid
improvements in health care. However, there is little
independent evidence that they are more cost effective
than other methods, and little knowledge about how
they could be made more effective. A number of
systematic evaluations are being performed by
researchers in North America, the UK, and Sweden.
This paper presents the shared ideas from two meetings
of these researchers. The evidence to date is that some
collaboratives have stimulated improvements in patient
care and organisational performance, but there are
significant differences between collaboratives and
teams. The researchers agreed on the possible reasons
why some were less successful than others, and
identified 10 challenges which organisers and teams
need to address to achieve improvement. In the absence
of more conclusive evidence, these guidelines are likely
to be useful for collaborative organisers, teams and their
managers and may also contribute to further research
into collaboratives and the spread of innovations in
health care