Bio: D. Timothy Wilson, B.M., B.S., a 2000-01 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy, is a practicing general practitioner and director of the newly formed St. Paul Royal College of General Practitioners Quality Unit, which supports the U.K.'s Clinical Governance effort in primary care. He is also director of the Primary Care Group Resource Unit based in the Public Health Resource Unit at Oxford University's Institute of Health Sciences. Wilson's unit conducts research that examines the development of primary care groups in the NHS, identifies the level of involvement of health professionals in working with these groups, assesses the learning needs of members of the boards of primary care groups, and determines how clinical governance can best be supported in primary care settings in the United Kingdom. Based at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Harvard Medical School, his Harkness Fellowship project examines the diffusion and sustainability of quality improvement following the implementation of a Collaborative Breakthrough Series project.
Placement: Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Mentors: Paul Cleary, Ph.D.; Donald Berwick, M.D., M.P.P., F.R.C.P.
Project: Analytical Study of Collaborative Improvement: Experience and Thoughts from Seven Countries
Description: Wilson's project investigated the underlying principles in collaborative improvement in health care "pioneered by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement" and other quality improvement and patient safety techniques. He conducted interviews with fifteen world experts in collaborative improvement, and used these to develop a conceptual framework and spell out collaborative improvement's methods, assumptions, and theoretical models of spread and change.