iNICQ: Internet-Based Newborn Improvement Collaborative for Quality
About the QI Collaborative
VON’s Internet-based Newborn Improvement Collaborative for Quality (iNICQ) brings teams together to use local and collective data to guide improvement on a designated topic. Participating centers are supported with access to expert faculty, VON measurement and reporting, and an interactive online toolkit of evidence-based practices. Participation in the collaborative is a benefit of Quality Circle membership.
All Care is Brain Care: 2023-2026
Why Focus on Brain Care?
While we continue to improve neonatal survival rates, we cannot do so at the expense of or without a clear focus on our ability to safeguard the full potential of each infant.
All care we provide must consider an especially vulnerable and important organ: the developing brain.
By exploring evidence and implementing better practices, we can ensure that all care we provide benefits the brain.
All Care is Brain Care Program Structure
With the aim to prevent injury, protect normal maturation and development, and promote positive experiences and relationships, we support teams with:
- potentially better practices/change ideas and clinical examples
- measurement plans and reporting
- foundational QI resources
- consultation and collaboration with care experts and other teams
Why Approach Brain Care with VON?
More than 700 teams participating in VON QI for over 25 years have demonstrated remarkable improvements in clinical outcomes, substantial cost savings, and progress in addressing disparities and promoting family-centered care.
Improvement in VON collaboratives is data-driven (with audits conducted by VON), and based in evidence. Our approach to quality improvement encompasses the entire care team, including parents, and is based on foundational principles that teams have found effective in sustaining improvement.
VON Collaboratives: iNICQ and NICQ
Teams participating in iNICQ and/or NICQ are part of the VON Quality Circle.
iNICQ: QI Collaborative bringing teams together to use local and collective data to guide improvement on a topic designated on a year-to-year basis.
NICQ: QI Collaborative in designated homerooms (8-10 centers) working on similar projects and collaborating on a focused area of improvement in two-year cycles.
How the Improvement Collaborative Works
Participating teams:
- Review their VON data;
- Identify opportunities to improve neuroprotective care;
- Apply structured quality improvement in partnership with families and colleagues at other centers;
- Custom interactive toolkits include evidence-based potentially better practices and change ideas (we consider practices potentially better because they must be tested and adapted to each center’s unique context)
- VON Day Audits support center-level benchmarking and provide metrics to measure the improvement of the collaborative as a whole;
- Webinars and regular communications support teams with education and examples that can be applied to their improvement focus;
- Achieve measurable improvement in health outcomes, family experience, and local organizational priorities.
iNICQ Features
The iNICQ improvement collaborative is a benefit of Quality Circle membership. Specific features of iNICQ include:
- Interactive topic-specific toolkit
- Additional toolkits outlining key evidence, potentially better practices, and change ideas
- Supplemental toolkits include: Improving outcomes for micropremature infants, Minimizing brain injury, Optimizing nutrition and minimizing NEC, Infants requiring surgery, and Minimizing lung injury
- Topical Communities led by a Care Expert
- Community Forum and dedicated listserv to communicate with expert faculty and peers
- Live webinar series
- Support to implement Experience-Based Co-Design with families
- Online classroom, including recorded webinars accessible any time for CE credit
- VON Day Audits focused on handoffs to provide baseline gap analysis and track progress over time
- Education for QI fundamentals for entire interdisciplinary team
- Improvement stories from teams applying QI and EBCD methodologies
- Faculty review of improvement posters
- Maintenance of Certification (MOC) Part 4 credits for entire physician team
- CME/CNE, for an unlimited number of team members
Questions?
We will be happy to address any questions you have about Quality Circle membership or the iNICQ collaborative. Please contact Pam Ford, iNICQ Program Coordinator: pam@vtoxford.org.
iNICQ participation is included in Quality Circle membership
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