Key components of external facilitation in an acute stroke quality improvement collaborative in the Veterans Health Administration

Table 1 Providing tool support to the stroke teams to facilitate quality improvement

	Self-reported % of time spent on encouraging application of process improvement tools (n = 5)
Process improvement tools	Stroke-QUERI facilitators			Industrial engineer (IE) facilitators
Process improvement tools	(Implementation researchers)			(VERC VA-CASE)
	022001	022003	022005	022002	022004
• Project charter	25%	20%	30%	25%	20%
• Process map	15%	10%	50%	25%	80%
• Spaghetti diagram	15%	10%	10%	10%	15%
• Impact effort matrix	15%	10%	20%–40%	10%	0%
• PDSA (plan, do, study, act) cycles	80%	20%	100%	75%	80%

Note: process improvement tools were introduced to the stroke teams during the 3-day collaborative meeting and subsequently, during the facilitation sessions. Each facilitator was asked to estimate time from 0%–100% for each tool; therefore, their total time may be more or less than 100%.

ISSN: 1748-5908