Background/Aims: The national case for learning healthcare systems was made in a 2006 Institute of Medicine (IOM) workshop. The IOM’s vision was healthcare systems where “the process of generating and applying the best evidence will be natural and seamless components of the process of care itself.” HMORN members have the potential to model this future, but few of them have yet achieved the necessary levels of integration with their affiliated care and insurance organizations and none fulfill the IOM vision. The Mental Health Research Network (MHRN) proposes to build such integrated relationships with each of its partner organizations and knit them together into a learning healthcare network for mental health in hopes of becoming a model for a future HMORN learning network.
Methods: Phase I: a lead at each MHRN research group identifies appropriate leaders among their organizational partners and builds bidirectional relationships while identifying their mental health improvement priorities, researchable problems, and questions. Phase II: these new partnerships are formalized through periodic meetings and small projects while developing partnership grant proposals that address operational leaders’ priorities. Phase III: we demonstrate the seamless generation and application of evidence within each organization desired by the IOM. Phase IV: we collaborate across MHRN members as a learning network and a template for the HMORN to become a learning healthcare network.
Results: We are just beginning, building the relationships and trust that will turn into more formal structures in Phase II and shared projects and studies. Each site has a person to coordinate this effort and a list of important mental health affiliated leadership positions. The level of partnership varies from regular meetings at some sites to just beginning conversations at others. This presentation will quantify our progress, describe barriers encountered, and provide concrete examples.
Conclusions: MHRN and HMORN have an opportunity to be leaders in transforming health care by organizing and modeling learning through strategic bidirectional partnerships. If anyone can achieve the IOM vision, it should be us, but the path is unclear and the cultural and historical barriers are many.