Closing the Gap through Clinical Communities Eleven projects from across the UK worked to improve the quality and safety of care in a different clinical area

Closing the Gap through Clinical Communities supported improvement projects led by clinicians with a track record as influential leaders within their clinical networks.

The clinicians and their teams chose the area they wanted to improve and the nature of the methods and approaches to close the gap between regular care and best practice.

Aims

Closing the Gap through Clinical Communities aimed to:

• build the knowledge and skills of clinical teams in how to make improvements in the quality of care
• contribute to the creation of a systematic body of knowledge concerning how best to engage clinicians in quality improvement activity and, in particular, how best to stimulate learning about quality improvement among health professionals
• support clinical communities to make demonstrable improvements in quality by tackling known gaps between best practice and routine delivery of care.

Learning and development was provided in areas of quality improvement, including knowledge of systems, measurement, an understanding of variation, and an ability to spread learning.

As well as developing the knowledge of the project teams, the programme worked to create a systematic body of knowledge on how best to encourage learning about quality improvement and engage clinicians in quality improvement activities.

Closing the Gap through Clinical Communities built on our Engaging with Quality in Primary Care programme.