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 from faculty and teams, share tools and information with colleagues, and action plan with your team
• Structured bi-monthly  teleconference calls facilitated by expert faculty in each of the five intervention areas to review and plan tests of change, gather knowledge and tools, and share progress
• Self-paced online resources from other teams and faculty 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
• One 3.5-day workshop in the fall, including a day-long “snorkel,” or idea generation session, and intensive workshops to teach the foundational aspects of the five intervention areas. Teams will leave the workshop with a specific action plan, including a schedule and curriculum for the intervention calls and activities for the months following the workshop. These activities include the faculty-led, bi-monthly teleconference calls and a plan for rapid-cycle testing and sharing among teams. 
• One two-day meeting in the spring, focused on team sharing and collaboration. Faculty will identify action plans for your team for the following months and actively connect and coach teams working in the same intervention areas to accelerate their results.