Best Practice of Best Practice

All health care providers agree that evidence based practice is the best method to care for patients. However, initiation of "best practices" is often difficult, taking years if not decades to accomplish. In the April edition of the Joint Commission Journal of Quality and Patient Safety, a team from the Mayo Clinic presented their solution for this slow adaption. The Mayo Model of Diffusion is a structured method that utilizes a checklist with over 50 tasks. The first of these are establishing leadership support and assessing readiness for the implementation. Other tasks include formalized oversight with assigned champions, a designated manager and team for roll-out, and liaisons to work with units, information technology and coordinating measurements. Even with all that effort, it took them an average of 18 months to implement a selected practice.