PURPOSEThe Using Learning Teams for Refl ective Adaptation (ULTRA) study used facilitated refl ective adaptive process (RAP) teams to enhance communication and decision making in hopes of improving adherence to multiple clinical guidelines; however, the study failed to show signifi cant clinical improvements. The purpose of this study was to examine qualitative data from 25 intervention practices to understand how they engaged in a team-based collaborative change management strategy and the types of issues they addressed. METHODSWe analyzed fi eld notes and interviews from a multimethod practice assessment, as well as fi eld notes and audio-taped recordings from RAP meetings, using an iterative group process and an immersion-crystallization approach.RESULTS Despite a history of not meeting regularly, 18 of 25 practices successfully convened improvement teams. There was evidence of improved practicewide communication in 12 of these practices. At follow-up, 8 practices continued RAP meetings and found the process valuable in problem solving and decision making. Seven practices failed to engage in RAP primarily because of key leaders dominating the meeting agenda or staff members hesitating to speak up in meetings. Although the number of improvement targets varied considerably, most RAP teams targeted patient care-related issues or practice-level organizational improvement issues. Not a single practice focused on adherence to clinical care guidelines.CONCLUSION Primary care practices can successfully engage in facilitated team meetings; however, leaders must be engaged in the process. Additional strategies are needed to engage practice leaders, particularly physicians, and to target issues related to guideline adherence. Ann Fam Med 2010;8:425-432. doi:10.1370/afm.1159. INTRODUCTIONThe quality of care in the United States is substandard, 1 and the early promise of improving care by translating research into practice has been disappointing. 2,3 Initial efforts to improve quality often target improving knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of individual health professionals by using such strategies as audit and feedback, reminder systems, continuing medical education, and educational outreach. 4 These strategies have been found to produce modest change. 2,3,[5][6][7][8] Even when improvement changes are adopted, they are often not sustained over time 7 and may deteriorate after practice members' attention shifts elsewhere.8 Sustaining change appears to be an active process that requires continual attention as innovations are adapted to fi t continually evolving environments.9,10 Additionally, small, independent primary care practices often lack the resources 426T E A M -BA SED CHANGE M A NAGEMENT or motivation needed to develop quality improvement strategies that can address multiple clinical issues. 11The substantial, broad improvements required for optimal primary care cannot be achieved by focusing improvement efforts on specifi c diseases or on individual professional behavior. In fact, primary care pract...

Health care reform calls for patient-centered medical homes built around whole person care and healing relationships. Efforts to transform primary care practices and deliver these qualities have been challenging. This study describes one Family Medicine residency's efforts to develop an adaptive leadership curriculum and use coaching as a teaching method to address this challenge. We review literature that describes a parallel between the skills underlying such care and those required for adaptive leadership. We address two questions: What is leadership? Why focus on adaptive leadership? We then present a synthesis of leadership theories as a set of process skills that lead to organization learning through effective work relationships and adaptive leadership. Four models of the learning process needed to acquire such skills are explored. Coaching is proposed as a teaching method useful for going beyond information transfer to create the experiential learning necessary to acquire the process skills. Evaluations of our efforts to date are summarized. We discuss key challenges to implementing such a curriculum and propose that teaching adaptive leadership is feasible but difficult in the current medical education and practice contexts.

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The U.S. health care system serves a diverse population, often resulting in significant disparities in delivery and quality of care. Nevertheless, most quality improvement efforts fail to systematically assess diversity and associated disparities. This article describes application of the multimethod assessment process (MAP) for understanding disparities in relation to diversity, cultural competence, and quality improvement in clinical practice. MAP is an innovative quality improvement methodology that integrates quantitative and qualitative techniques and produces a system level understanding of organizations to guide quality improvement interventions. A demonstration project in a primary care practice illustrates the utility of MAP for assessing diversity.

Primary care reform proponents advocate for patient-centered medical homes built on interdisciplinary teamwork. Recent efforts document the difficulty achieving reform, which requires personal transformation by doctors. Currently no widely accepted curriculum to teach team membership in Family Medicine residencies exists. Organizational Development (OD) has 40 years of experience assessing and teaching the skills underlying teamwork. We present a curriculum that adapts OD insights to articulate a framework describing effective teamwork; define and teach specific team membership skills; reframe residents' perception of medicine to make relationships relevant; and transform training experiences to provide practice in interdisciplinary teamwork. Curriculum details include a rotation to introduce the new framework, six workshops, experiential learning in the practice, and coaching as a teaching method. We review program evaluations. We discuss challenges, including institutional resources and support, incorporation of a new language and culture into residency training, recruitment "for fit," and faculty/staff development. We conclude that teaching the relationship skills of effective team membership is feasible, but hard. Succeeding has transformative implications for patient relationships, residency training and the practice of family medicine.