Table 7 Development of QI capacity

• It’s hard to say because we didn’t really have quality improvement in place before. So, it’s been a great vehicle to advance it. So, at the time, when our organization was old enough to be able to start thinking about quality improvement, that is when it started. So, we could vote as a team. So, we have really grown up with it. So, it’s, maybe, been a consolidating focus. (ID = 013)

• When we started to involve ourselves in quality improvement initiatives in a more formal capacity, we recognized the need to, I guess, retool the organization in terms of training, in terms of resources, to be able to do it properly. We didn’t have the internal expertise to do that. When we were able to hire QIDSS as an improvement decision support specialist that was very helpful, but still having more of a formal process in place that would allow us to structure and tap into data in a more meaningful way was helpful. D2D seemed to provide a method for us to be able to do that, and one that was aligned with more of a provincial initiative as well, so we didn’t feel like we were doing this on our own, but in fact was part of a larger quality improvement community that was engaged. (ID = 005)

• We wanted to participate because we knew the importance of being able to measure the work that we’re doing and we didn’t know how to do this in a meaningful way. We didn’t know if we wanted to ... We thought the D2D would help support us, would help us look at what we are able to measure, what we’re struggling to measure, help us in ways that we’d be able to get that information and be able to compare it with the other family health teams across the province. We wanted to be able to measure how we’re doing, to be able to compare ourselves with other similar groups throughout the province, but knowing that, for us, we were just starting the measurement process. And we wanted to know what we’re able to do and what our limitations were. (ID = 012)