Mobilizing strategic inflection points for sustainment of an effective intervention in an integrated learning health system: an interpretive description.

Background: Innovative models of care have the potential to improve the sustainability of health systems by improving patient and provider experiences and population outcomes while simultaneously reducing costs. Yet, it is challenging to recognize the distinctive points during research and quality improvement processes that contribute to sustainment of effective interventions. The business concept of an inflection point-the position on the curve of a trajectory where the progress in implementation of an intervention is accelerated or decelerated-may be useful to understand implementation and improve sustainability and ultimately sustainment of effective interventions. The purpose of this study was to retrospectively identify and describe strategic inflection points that accelerated the sustainability process and led to the sustainment of Alberta Family Integrated Care.

Methods: This qualitative study was conducted in Alberta, Canada and employed an interpretive description design. Purposively sampled documents (proposals, project management plans, reports to funders and sponsors, meeting minutes, and fidelity audit and feedback checklists) from the Alberta Family Integrated Care cluster randomized controlled trial and quality improvement project constituted data for this study.

Results: To accelerate sustainability in the research context, we identified (1) alignment with strategic priorities, (2) iterative, user-centered co-design, and (3) contextualization of implementation as strategic inflection points. To accelerate sustainability in the health system context, we identified (1) the learning health system, (2) enduring partnerships, (3) responsivity to societal and system change, (4) embedded governance, and (5) intentional integration into the health system as strategic inflection points. Capitalizing on these strategic inflection points led to sustainment of Alberta Family Integrated Care in the provincial health system.

Conclusions: We identified key inflection points in the research and health system contexts that led to sustainment of Alberta Family Integrated Care. By anticipating, recognizing, and leveraging inflection points in the sustainability process, researchers may be able to accelerate implementation and achieve sustainment of multi-component interventions in complex systems.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02879799. Registration date: May 27, 2016. Protocol version: June 9, 2016; version 2. Protocol publication: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-017-2181-3 .