The Observatory of Innovation in Healthcare Management in Catalonia: supporting transferability of good experiences in healthcare management

Context: The aims of the Observatory of Innovation in Healthcare Management in Catalonia are to collect, validate, organize and value, the knowledge of the Catalan health system from many innovative experiences that are being developed today. The Observatory brings together the efforts made by the organisations in innovating in several spheres of management. It provides a forum for compiling innovative experiences and it offers an innovation community web page fostering interaction among 450 professionals who exchange their experiences.

Methods: The process to register an innovative experience starts first with the signing up in the Innovation community. Innovative experiences should met criteria on implementation, bringing a change, impact on resources and scalability. Secondly, organisations may submit a self-assessment of their experiences. Then, the review and the self-assessment evaluation of the innovative management experiences constitutes the third context in which the Observatory operates, conducting a quality analysis done by the OIGS, to check that the experience meets with the established inclusion criteria. Experiences which pass the assessment phase are then awarded a certificate of quality issued by the AQuAS.

Results: The Observatory compiles a total of 183 innovative experiences. The majority of these experiences are focused on improving strategic and care processes, handling patients with chronic illnesses, use of healthcare information technology and the consumption of pharmaceuticals in the area of primary and specialized care. A total of 49 out of the 183 experiences fall within the specialized care in coordination with primary care area of action; 45 experiences refer to the area of specialized care. In terms of key themes, 101 experiences deal with improvements in care procedures and strategies, followed by 26 experiences concerning management of chronic care patients, 25 regarding ICT and telemedicine, and 12 pharmaceutical experiences.

Discussion: The Observatory of Innovation in Healthcare Management in Catalonia brings together the efforts made by the organisations in innovation in several spheres of management One of the main challenges however will be to support scalability and transferability of these innovative experiences (new care pathway, service or technology) that have the potential for wide scale spread in other areas to improve in the end outcomes and patient satisfaction.

Conclusions: The identification of innovative experiences allows compiling some of the best practices observed in the system.

The Observatory through the public and innovation community website constitutes a display cabinet for supporting transferability of good practices and it also forges ties among institutions creating synergies and joint projects.

One of the main challenges in the future will be to identify barriers and drivers for the implementation, sharing problems, acknowledging failures and finding solutions in different contexts for the adoption and spread of good practices.