South East Essex Quality Improvement Collaborative

The Quality Improvement Collaborative programme supported General Practice staff in South East Essex to develop and implement local improvement projects, harnessing the opportunities presented by the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF), Primary Care Contract and development of new care models.

14 General Practices ran improvement projects that tackled major challenges faced by their surgeries, including large numbers of urgent prescription requests, inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions and unnecessary GP appointments used by frequent attenders.

More about this work

This programme was based on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Breakthrough Series collaborative model, the key elements of which are joint learning events and practice-level action periods.

Three collaboratives were set up, each representing different localities within the area. Each GP practice involved worked on a QI project relevant to their practice but focussed on an overarching theme decided as a collaborative. Over the course of the year, six Learning Sessions took place for each collaborative, covering core QI tools and methodology and focussing on sharing learning between GP practices.

Each collaborative was supported by two or three local QI leads who underwent training in Quality Improvement methodology and tools and received coaching to enable them to support their colleagues.