Collaboratives provide results-focused improvement opportunities to teams with a wide range of content and improvement experience. Participants start with in-depth diagnostic and goal-setting processes and identify initial areas of focus based on their expertise in the topic and in improvement. Teams engage in rapid testing of changes that have been shown to improve care, adapting them to their own settings, and constantly measuring the outcomes.

Learning takes place in a variety of settings:

• Virtual learning sessions on WebEx several times per year to gather expert knowledge, share information with colleagues, and plan action with your team
• Structured teleconferences at least monthly to get additional information and share progress
• Self-paced online resources to bolster your team’s learning
• Access to the Extranet, IHI’s private web-based work space, for sharing data and documents
• Listserv communication that is available all the time to all team members and faculty
• Two face-to-face meetings as a major opportunity for accelerated learning