Step 1 – Assess

 

Before starting any project, it is important to know your baseline. This assessment tool is designed to help teams identify what they're doing well and what areas they would like to work on.

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Primary care team assessment – NZ version

As part of the Self-Management Support in Primary Care project, a number of assessment tools were reviewed that might be useful to help primary care teams assess their current approach to self-management support, quality improvement, teamwork and potential areas for improvement.

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None of the existing tools were ideal for NZ primary care teams, so the following assessment tool was developed and refined over a number of iterations. Effective self-management support requires a board team approach and underpinned by high-quality systems, hence this assessment tool looks at many aspects of primary care.

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How to use this assessment tool

These self-assessment questions help a primary care team identify their current systems and processes which support high-quality care and support for self-management. The questions can be answered individually or as part of a team discussion.

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If answered individually, a facilitated discussion to review the responses for each question provides a valuable starting point. During the pilot stage of this project, these discussions often highlighted widely varying perspectives and approaches to everything from care planning to nursing roles and expectations. This stimulated valuable discussion as to why these variations exist and areas teams wanted to work on over the next 3 to 6 months as part of their team action plan. 

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Assessing for change over time

All or some of the questions could be reviewed at regular intervals to help monitor progress and whether positive changes are being perceived by the team.

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During the pilot, the assessment tool was available as hard copy or an online version using Survey Monkey. The results were then collated by the project team on behalf of the pilot teams and a review of the results facilitated by one of the project team.

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Going forward, PHOs or primary care teams may wish to upload the assessment form to Survey Monkey or equivalent online survey tool which can automatically collate a teams' results. Alternatively, the Word version is available below and may be preferred by those less familiar with online tools.

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Access the survey tool (Word doc)

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Acknowledgements

Sources used to help create this assessment tool for NZ include the 10 Building Blocks for Primary Care, Bodenheimer et al and the Improving Primary Care Guide LEAP Program, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.