Recruitment and Retention of Primary Care Practices in Quality Improvement Initiatives: A Toolkit

Effectively engaging practices in a primary care quality improvement (QI) initiative, including both the initial recruitment and ongoing retention, is essential to the success of the initiative. However, doing so can be challenging. It is time consuming and resource intensive, and often takes longer than planned. This toolkit provides guidance, tips, and examples to help support future efforts to engage practices in QI initiatives. It is our hope that groups can use the insights and tips included here (customizing them for their own needs) to make their recruitment efforts as effective and efficient as possible. These materials were developed based on work conducted for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s EvidenceNOW: Advancing Hearth Health initiative. This initiative included seven regional cooperatives that provided QI support services to small- and mediumsized primary care practices, a national evaluation team (ESCALATES), and a technical assistance center (TAC). Information included in this toolkit was gleaned from initiative-related publications, information shared by the cooperatives, and guidance developed by the TAC to assist with that effort. Allison Cuthel from the New York City Cooperative and Julie Schmelzer from the Midwest Cooperative shared their valuable insights and provided expert review as part of the development of this toolkit. Specific references are included in each section, as relevant.