AHRQ Practice Toolbox: Practice transformation

This is the seventh in a series of articles from the National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research (NCEPCR) in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). This series introduces sets of tools and resources designed to help your practice.

Thus far, this series has discussed topics such as shared decision making, team-based care, and integrating behavioral health and primary care. All of these are important topics, but this raises the question, “How do I make the changes to my practice?” This month’s article discusses AHRQ’s resources for transforming your practice to be able to better introduce these advances.

A good place to start is AHRQ’s Improving Primary Care Practice page, which offers a wide range of resources designed to help practices improve their care. Here are some of the improvement topics for which resources are available:

Building capacity for quality improvement in primary care. Primary care practices often benefit from external support and assistance while they develop the capacity to carry out quality improvement activities as an integral part of their work. These resources describe approaches and supports that are needed to build QI capacity in primary care.