Taking Innovations to Scale | AHRQ Innovations Exchange

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Taking Innovations to Scale

Scaling up and Spreading Innovation

The purpose of the Health Care Innovations Exchange is to speed the implementation of new and better ways of delivering health care. Taking Innovations to Scale highlights resources and information to help innovators spread their innovations, and to help adopters find, learn about, and implement new ways to improve care in their organizations.

Taking Innovations to Scale includes a Spread Success Stories section, which highlights innovations that have been successfully scaled. Our Getting Started section provides helpful tools and links to resources for both innovators and potential adopters related to scale up and spread. The section Voices from the Field offers expert perspectives on the topic, video presentations from innovators who are attempting to spread their innovations, and findings from several Health Care Innovations Exchange activities in 2011 on the scale and spread of innovations.

Please continue to visit Taking Innovations to Scale to learn more about this topic.

Spread Success Stories

Innovations with a Track Record of Spread

Our Expert Perspectives on Scale Up and Spread from Kliger, Hines, Battles, and Shields discuss approaches to spreading specific innovative programs. Read the full profiles of these innovations at the following links:

Nine-Hospital Collaborative Uses Patient Screening Criteria, Fast-Track Diagnosis, and Treatment Protocols to Reduce Sepsis Mortality by More Than 50 Percent. Addressed in Kliger perspective.
Intensive Care Units Participating in Hospital Collaborative Implement Multiple Improvement Strategies, Leading to Fewer Deaths and Lower Costs. Addressed in Hines and Battles perspective.
Creation of Households Program in Nursing Home Improves Residents' Health Status, Reduces Staff Turnover, and Boosts Demand for Services. Addressed in Shields perspective.

Scaling and Spreading Strategies to Improve Cardiovascular Health

These innovations describe the approaches and challenges of scaling promising programs targeting cardiovascular health.

Getting Started

Practical Tools for Scaling Innovations

Resources to Enhance Your Spread Knowledge

Will It Work Here? A Decisionmaker’s Guide to Adopting Innovations
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Building National Health Care Quality Improvement Campaigns to Succeed: Lessons from the CUSP: CLABSI Project
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Taking Best Practices to Scale: Spreading Effective Healthcare Practices & Programs
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program: Five-Part Webcast on Economic Evaluation
ExpandNet: ExpandNet is a global network of representatives from international organizations, non-governmental organizations, academic and research institutions, ministries of health and specific projects who seek to advance the science and practice of scaling. View ExpandNet’s Scaling-Up Bibliography
The Conference to Advance the State of the Science and Practice on Scale-up and Spread of Effective Health Programs was held July 8-10th in Washington D.C., with funding from AHRQ, Commonwealth Fund, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Donaghue Foundation and John A. Hartford Foundation:

- The Conference to Advance the State of the Science and Practice on Scale-up and Spread of Effective Health Programs Literature Database External Link

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- The Conference to Advance the State of the Science and Practice on Scale-up and Spread of Effective Health Programs Resource Database External Link

(Adobe Reader is required to view or print the PDF. Download a free copy here. External Web Site Policy

)

Voices from the Field

Expert Perspectives on Scale Up and Spread

PERSPECTIVE

Peggy Hill, MS, reveals how the Nurse-Family Partnership became a national model for maternal child health programs

Julie Kliger, MPA, BSN, Director, Integrated Nurse Leadership Program, University of California San Francisco

PERSPECTIVE

Julie Kliger, MPA, BSN, explains a nurse-focused leadership model for spreading and sustaining innovations

Stephen Hines, Ph.D., Vice-President for Research at the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET)

James Battles, Ph.D., Senior Service Fellow for Patient Safety at the AHRQ Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

PERSPECTIVE

Stephen Hines, Ph.D., Vice-President for Research at the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) and James Battles, Ph.D., Senior Service Fellow for Patient Safety at the AHRQ Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, describe the national campaign to scale up and spread CUSP-CLABSI

PERSPECTIVE

Steve Shields, CEO/Principal, Action Pact Development, LLC explains how he and his colleagues spread a long-term care innovation and the challenges associated with these efforts

PERSPECTIVE

Amy Berman, B.S., R.N., Program Officer of the John A. Hartford Foundation shares how the Hartford Foundation supports the spread and dissemination of proven innovations in older adult populations

PERSPECTIVE

Jürgen Unützer, M.D., M.P.H., Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington, describes the evidence-based IMPACT program for late-life depression and the role that the IMPACT Implementation Center and AIMS Center play in the program’s scale up and spread.

PERSPECTIVE

Barbara Spurrier, M.H.A., Administrator Director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, shares how the center develops, tests, and supports innovations that can transform health and health care delivery.

Million Hearts™

The Heart 360^® Innovation was one of several programs featured in a Million Hearts™ event in April 2012. The Million Hearts™ initiative invited prominent health care thought leaders and stakeholders to Washington DC, to inspire creative thinking about scaling and spreading cardiovascular prevention activities throughout the United States.

Scaling and Spreading the Heart 360^® Innovation: Part 1

David J. Magid

Read the innovation profile >>

Scaling and Spreading the Heart 360^® Innovation: Part 2

David J. Magid

Read the innovation profile >>

Spotlight on Innovators’ Spread Efforts

This AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange video series, Can This Innovation Be Scaled?, features presentations from three innovators who are attempting to scale their programs, as well as reactions from a panel of stakeholders. These videos were filmed at the Scale Up & Spread Round Table, held in Rockville, MD on May 11, 2011. Access the video summaries. >>

The Essentia Heart Failure Program

Linda Wick

Read the innovation profile >>

Care Management Plus Program

David Dorr

Read the innovation profile >>

Brenner Children’s Hospital BrennerFIT program

Joseph Skelton

Read the innovation profile >>

Presentations and Reports

Spread Models and Lessons: Learning from the ARHQ Health Care Innovations Exchange

Presentation at the 4th Annual NIH Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation: Policy and Practice, March 21-22, 2011
Presenters: Mary P. Nix, AHRQ; Veronica Nieva, Westat; Bruce Leff, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; and Tracy Novak, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange Report on Scale Up and Spread Activities 2011

This report provides an overview of the general findings, lessons learned, and overall recommendations derived from the 2011 scale up and spread activities undertaken by the AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange

Scaling and Spreading Innovation: Strategies to Improve Cardiovascular Health

This report presents a summary and findings from an April 2012 event entitled Million Hearts™ Scaling and Spreading Innovation: Strategies to Improve Cardiovascular Health, sponsored by AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in partnership with the American Heart Association. The event generated valuable findings for the emerging field of scaling and spreading innovation.

Last updated: December 19, 2012.