There are many ways to transform care, and many angles from which to approach integration. The first step to deciding which strategies you should work to adopt is properly understanding how far long you already are.
This self-assessment tool, designed by the UCSF Center for Excellence in Primary Care, is designed to help you understand the degree to which your primary care practice is integrated into the broader “medical neighborhood,” through questions on success of integration and strategies for integration in each of six domains. The questions are designed to help clinics reflect on where they are and stimulate conversations on how to move forward in integration. We hope you will find it useful as both an assessment tool and a guide.
Download a PDF version of the assessment.
We recommend that you discuss the tool with a representative sample of your clinic, including senior leadership, middle management, front line staff and patient advocates, to allow for a comprehensive look at your clinic’s progress. Some practices ask participants to complete the tool individually prior to meeting, to get people thinking about care integration and to help the group explore differing perspectives.
As we believe that much of this assessment is based on local capacity, if your organization has multiple practice sites, please respond based on one of the sites unless site based services are relatively uniform. Questions on overall success of integration are on a 1-10 point scale; questions on strategies used are on a 1-5 scale.
The survey also notes strategies for integration in each of six domains, which may be useful as your clinic considers future programming. The survey can be completed in its entirety or through domain-specific modules, which are also available. Ideally, this survey can be completed on a regular basis to enable your team to track improvement over time. More details on all of the evidence-based strategies in each of the domains, with the exception of behavioral health, can be found in the full report.
Find this useful or interesting? We’re constantly sharing stuff like this. Sign up to receive our newsletter to stay in the loop.