Improving the quality of care in care homes using the Quality Improvement Collaborative approach: lessons learnt from six projects conducted in the UK and the Netherlands

The Breakthrough Series Quality Improvement Collaborative (QIC) initiative is a well-developed and widely used approach but most of what we know about it has come from healthcare settings. In this article, those leading QICs to improve care in care homes provide detailed accounts of six QICs, and share their learning of applying the QIC approach in the care home sector. Overall, five care home specific lessons were learnt: i) plan for the resource needed to support collaborative teams with collecting, processing, and interpreting data ii) create encouraging and safe working environments to help collaborative team members feel valued, iii) recruit collaborative teams, QIC leads and facilitators who have established relationships with care homes, iv) regularly check project ideas are aligned with team members’ job roles, responsibility and priorities, and v) work flexibly and accept that planned activities may need adapting as the project progresses. These insights are targeted at teams delivering QICs in care homes. These insights demonstrate the need to consider the care home context when applying improvement tools and techniques in this setting.