Quality Improvement (QI) is emerging as the new frontier of practice. It’s a revolutionary concept that redefines the standards of healthcare across Africa. While QI is a new space, ACQUIRE is leading in documenting how frontline QI initiatives impact the frontline. Frontline-led QI is a paradigm shift. It’s a continuous process of assessing, refining and enhancing every aspect of patient care, from diagnosis to treatment. It’s about making healthcare safer, more responsive, and profoundly effective.
ACQUIRE adopts a long-term perspective on the healthcare system’s evolution in Africa, offering a framework for the development and facilitation of research in Quality Improvement (QI) at the frontline of healthcare. Our core mission is to achieve sustainable, evidence-based enhancements in the quality of healthcare for FHCWs, healthcare institutions, and the healthcare system as a whole. Our strategy involves bridging the knowledge-to-action gap by educating frontline healthcare professionals in QI practices, building their capacity in this area, establishing a supportive environment for evidence-based QI within their institutions, and fostering a collaborative community that drives the adoption of QI practices. Our ultimate aim is to make healthcare safer, more responsive, equitable, highly effective, and more efficient in Africa.
The Know-Do Gap
Long-term investments in building the evidence base for healthcare guidelines have ensured that healthcare decision-makers now know what to do. What we don’t know is how to do it at scale, with excellence and adapted to our local contexts.
Quality Improvement occurs when the frontline builds academically rigorous, data-driven habits of practice that bridge the know-do gap. This is implementation science at its best.
By consistently examining data along feedback loops, frontline healthcare teams are able to identify patterns early, test contextually relevant change ideas and ultimately, improve patient outcomes.
Collaborating frontline healthcare workers, become knowledge producers who implement the QI evidence at scale across QI teams, institutions and countries.
Your QI Investment
Long-term investments in building the evidence base for healthcare guidelines have ensured that healthcare decision-makers now know what to do. What we don’t know is how to do it at scale, with excellence and adapted to our local contexts.
An investment in academically rigorous, FHCW-led quality improvement will yield direct benefits to patients as well as frontline research leadership that can scale contextually relevant approaches.
- ACQUIRE’s academically rigorous, grounds-up frontline focus strengthens the ongoing investments in national quality models and strategies.
- While Quality Improvement is a new space, ACQUIRE is leading in documenting how frontline QI initiatives impact the frontline.
- The ACQUIRE founding institutions have extensive experience training the workforce in SSA and are leaders in implementing QI.
How Funding ACQUIRE Anchors Health Funding Priorities
As a result of external support, several countries are already implementing national quality improvement strategies.
Most of these models for health come from a quality assurance or compliance perspective. In doing so, they overlook a major driver for change.
The frontline health worker turns QI into an everyday tool, which much like the stethoscope diagnoses the problem in real time, inspiring a flourishing culture of learning (documenting, reflecting, testing, innovating) using data science.
COVID-19 is a unique opportunity – both frontline healthcare workers and patients are ready for data-driven engagement and learning.
Frontline-led quality improvement is an opportunity for growing learning systems that can drive efficient change at scale.
In an era where healthcare is more complex than ever, the importance of QI cannot be overstated. It’s the linchpin for addressing healthcare challenges, from patient safety to equitable access, cost-efficiency, and effectiveness.
