Implementing improvements: Opportunities to integrate quality improvement and implementation science (1 May 2021)

Summary

In hospitals, improvers and implementers use quality improvement science (QIS) and less frequently implementation research (IR) to improve healthcare and health outcomes.

Narrowly defined quality improvement (QI) guided by QIS focuses on transforming systems of care to improve healthcare quality and delivery and IR focuses on developing approaches to close the gap between what is known (research findings) and what is practiced (by clinicians). However, QI regularly involves implementing evidence and IR consistently addresses organisational and setting-level factors.

The disciplines share a common end goal, namely, to improve health outcomes, and work to understand and change the same actors in the same settings often encountering and addressing the same challenges.

QIS has its origins in industry and IR in behavioural science and health services research. Despite overlap in purpose, the two sciences have evolved separately. Thought leaders in QIS and IR have argued the need for improved collaboration between the disciplines. The Veterans Health Administration’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative has successfully employed QIS methods to implement evidence-based practices more rapidly into clinical practice, but similar formal collaborations between QIS and IR are not widespread in other health care systems. Acute care teams are well positioned to improve care delivery and implement the latest evidence.

This paper provides an overview of QIS and IR; examine the key characteristics of QIS and IR, including strengths and limitations of each discipline; and present specific recommendations for integration and collaboration between the two approaches to improve the impact of QI and implementation efforts in the hospital setting.