Project description

The overall aim is to provide and implement a blueprint model for improving quality and safety of oral care for everyone: the DELIVER Quality Improvement Model. As highlighted in the 2021 WHO Oral Health Resolution, many EU citizens do not have access to quality oral care. This causes detrimental impacts for the individual citizen, while increasing costs and wasting resources on the macro level. However, there is a serious lack of synergistic oral care quality improvement. To address this complex systems problem, DELIVER will break new grounds by enabling deliberative dialogues between multiple stakeholders from multiple sectors directed at meaningful improvement of the quality and safety of oral healthcare on all levels of care delivery. Through involving citizens, patients, providers and policymakers, DELIVER will create a synergistic problem-solving ecosystem in the context of improving quality and safety of oral healthcare at practice-, community-, and policy-levels. Using a mixed-methods research design, DELIVER will build robust quality improvement (QI) approaches in 3 phases:

DELIVER will co-develop a set of QI indicators for applicability on the practice-, community-, and policy-levels. The indicators will be fed into an EU-wide monitoring framework. Situational analyses will explore the social worlds and arenas of action for QI in Europe (WP2).
In-depth analysis of select QI approaches: DELIVER will carry out multi-country case studies to develop and test novel QI interventions: (i) PROMs/PREMs-based QI in dental practices (WP3); (ii) community-based QI in vulnerable groups (WP4); (iii) quality-oriented commissioning of oral health services (WP5). Interactive digital tools (WP6) and the regulatory determinants of oral care quality improvement (WP7) will be leveraged to support all QI approaches examined in the project.
Integrative synthesis of knowledge: the knowledge gained in the 1st and 2nd phases will be merged into the DELIVER Quality Toolkit with manuals and digital tools for concretely actionable and context-adaptive approaches for oral care quality improvement (WP8).

DELIVER is built on cutting-edge improvement science, rigorous stakeholder involvement and innovative information systems. Contributing to the UN and WHO SDG & UHC goals, DELIVER will improve access to quality oral care for everyone without financial hardship and thus generate vast impact for individuals & society.

DELIVER is prominently supported by WHO, FDI, NCD Alliance, ICHOM and many others.

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