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Implementation of New Clinical Programs in the VHA Healthcare System: The Importance of Early Collaboration Between Clinical Leadership and Research

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ABSTRACT

Collaboration between policy, research, and clinical partners is crucial to achieving proven quality care. The Veterans Health Administration has expended great efforts towards fostering such collaborations. Through this, we have learned that an ideal collaboration involves partnership from the very beginning of a new clinical program, so that the program is designed in a way that ensures quality, validity, and puts into place the infrastructure necessary for a reliable evaluation. This paper will give an example of one such project, the Lung Cancer Screening Demonstration Project (LCSDP). We will outline the ways that clinical, policy, and research partners collaborated in design, planning, and implementation in order to create a sustainable model that could be rigorously evaluated for efficacy and fidelity. We will describe the use of the Donabedian quality matrix to determine the necessary characteristics of a quality program and the importance of the linkage with engineering, information technology, and clinical paradigms to connect the development of an on-the-ground clinical program with the evaluation goal of a learning healthcare organization. While the LCSDP is the example given here, these partnerships and suggestions are salient to any healthcare organization seeking to implement new scientifically proven care in a useful and reliable way.

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Acknowledgements

This project was funded by the Veterans Health Administration through the National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they do not have a conflict of interest. All authors are employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care, Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, HSR&D Services (152), 508 Fulton Street, Durham, NC, 27705, USA

    R. Ryanne Wu MD, Dawn Provenzale MD, MS, Heather A. King Ph.D., Santanu K. Datta Ph.D., Janet M. Grubber MSPH, Nina R. Sperber Ph.D. & George L. Jackson Ph.D.,MHA

  2. Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    R. Ryanne Wu MD, Heather A. King Ph.D., Santanu K. Datta Ph.D., Janet M. Grubber MSPH, Nina R. Sperber Ph.D. & George L. Jackson Ph.D.,MHA

  3. National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (NCP), Veterans Health Administration, Durham, NC, USA

    Linda S. Kinsinger MD, MPH

  4. VA Cooperative Studies Epidemiology Center, Durham Veteran Affairs Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA

    Dawn Provenzale MD, MS, Lottie K. Barnes MPH, CHES & Rebecca B. McNeil Ph.D.

  5. Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Dawn Provenzale MD, MS

  6. Veterans Engineering Resource Center (VERC), Pittsburgh Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Patricia Akerly CRNP, Nicholas Katich BS & Robert Monte RPh, MBA

  7. Division of Neonatology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

    Rebecca B. McNeil Ph.D.

  8. Health Services Research & Development Service, Veterans Health Administration, Washington, DC, USA

    David Atkins MD, MPH

Authors
  1. R. Ryanne Wu MD
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  2. Linda S. Kinsinger MD, MPH
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  3. Dawn Provenzale MD, MS
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  4. Heather A. King Ph.D.
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  5. Patricia Akerly CRNP
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  6. Lottie K. Barnes MPH, CHES
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  7. Santanu K. Datta Ph.D.
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  8. Janet M. Grubber MSPH
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  9. Nicholas Katich BS
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  10. Rebecca B. McNeil Ph.D.
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  11. Robert Monte RPh, MBA
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  12. Nina R. Sperber Ph.D.
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  13. David Atkins MD, MPH
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  14. George L. Jackson Ph.D.,MHA
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to R. Ryanne Wu MD.

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Wu, R.R., Kinsinger, L.S., Provenzale, D. et al. Implementation of New Clinical Programs in the VHA Healthcare System: The Importance of Early Collaboration Between Clinical Leadership and Research. J GEN INTERN MED 29 (Suppl 4), 825–830 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-014-3026-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-014-3026-3

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