What if there was a place for Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) participants from across the care continuum to gather? A place to share ideas, to network, to learn from and engage with one another? A place for the QIN-QIO to meet participants on their terms to share resources and spark conversations? In short, a place to connect.

An Online Community of Practice

In 2021, Superior Health Quality Alliance (Superior Health), a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) QIN-QIO, asked those questions as it explored possibilities for a learning management system that would create engagement among participants. Knowing that its website could function as a resource library, the organization leaned into engagement functionality and began to define what an online forum could look like for participants. Ultimately, Superior Health chose to partner with Mighty Networks, a proprietary digital platform that hosts online forums and courses, to realize its vision. Mighty Networks offered custom branding options, content flexibility and a price point for Superior Health to build an active online community for QIN-QIO participants.

An All-Teach-All-Learn Framework to Improve and Sustain Quality

In the spring of 2021, the Superior Health launched Superior Health Connect, an online community of practice and shared learning environment for QIN-QIO participants. The community fosters an all-teach-all-learn environment and provides a framework to improve and sustain health care quality improvement initiatives locally, regionally and nationally. Participants arrive at the site via invitation or email blast; once they sign up to join the community, they can:

• Filter content by topic, such as Health Equity, Care Coordination or Chronic Disease Management
• Join affinity groups, including the Food as Medicine Coalition or Nursing Home Sepsis Affinity Group, to find technical assistance and deeper learning. Groups can be customized to be open or closed based on needs
• Take on-demand courses on a variety of topics, including modules from Superior Health’s Front Line Forces initiative
• Get information about upcoming events
• Link to information and resources hosted on the Superior Health website
• Identify themselves by affiliation, such as Hospitals or Nursing Homes
• Engage directly with other members

Superior Health Connect incorporates the QIN-QIO's three-tiered implementation strategy—Independent Implementation, Affinity Groups and Structured Collaboratives—to use its expertise and technical assistance efficiently. And the site’s flexible design allows Superior Health to add or adjust content as needed in a changing landscape, such as by creating a short-term affinity group or by repurposing the didactic portion content of a structured collaborative into a course available to a broader audience. 

More Than a Year of Positive Results

• Launched April 19, 2021
• 432 members as of June 28, 2022
• 35.3 percent contribution rate
• 51.5 percent member retention rate
• Number of contributing members* has increased 65.8 percent vs. previous year

*Contributing member = a member who performed one of the following actions: creating a post, messaging, commenting, answering a question, RSVPing to an event, voting on a poll, cheering a post or sharing.

Continued Growth and Collegial Interaction

To ensure the forum engagement, Superior Health professionals act as hosts, monitoring content and encouraging interaction by posing questions, posting articles and providing outreach to new members. The forum functions exactly as Superior Health envisioned for participants, with room for further growth and development. But the team has been surprised by one unintended result: a boost in collegial interaction among Superior Health colleagues as they contribute to the community and create resources for its members. “Connect” proved itself as not only the forum’s name but an apt description of the experience it offers on all fronts.

This material was prepared by The Bizzell Group (Bizzell), the Data Validation and Administrative (DVA) contractor, under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Views expressed in this material do not necessarily reflect the official views or policy of CMS or HHS, and any reference to a specific product or entity herein does not constitute endorsement of that product or entity by CMS or HHS. 12SOW/Bizzell/DVA-1150-07/18/2023