A tool for sharing internal best practices.

Sharing internal best practices can be an important adjunct to other improvement approaches many of which focus on identifying and solving problems. A single-minded focus on problems may be demoralizing because it characterizes people and activities by their failures. In contrast initiatives promoting internal best practices focus on what people are doing right raise morale by demonstrating faith the staff and make achieving excellence seem possible. Bottom-up approaches to improvement such as sharing internal best practices also encourage more learning within the organization than do top-down approaches such as setting standards. Many experts advise health care managers to look outside their own organization for global standards and best practices to improve the quality of care. Yet practices developed inside the organization are not only more readily accessible but they are also more likely to suit the cultural and organizational setting and thus need the least adaptation. This tool is designed to help health care program managers understand what a best practice is identify best practices within their own organizations and share them internally. Too often internal sharing is limited to the informal diffusion of common practices through personal connections. Much more can be accomplished if an organization develops systematic processes to identify and share the practices that work best for them. (excerpt)