Abstract
Background: For 160 years, government agencies, corporations, and nonprofit organizations have relied on demonstrations of radical innovations and interventions to stimulate interest in them and subsequent diffusion. Unfortunately, researchers and practitioners alike often fail to distinguish the functions that a demonstration project may serve and, thus, put into practice hybrid demonstration forms that typically under-achieve in all functional objectives.
Methods: We (1) visited internal demonstrations of effective practices in primary care, palliative care, and population preventive services, (2) discussed the planning of demonstrations with national strategic support staff, and (3) reviewed the published literature about demonstration projects.
Results: In Kaiser Permanente nationally, demonstration projects are often initiated without regard to functional specification, perceptions of potential adopters, communication training of demonstration staff, or knowledge of published literature about the operation of demonstration projects.
Conclusions: The potential for improving the internal demonstration of effective practices in integrated healthcare delivery systems is large. Cost-effective strategies exist to improve the decision making of potential adopters, as well as accelerate the dissemination of effective practices through formative evaluation about the credibility of potential adopters, potential adopters’ perceptions of practices to be demonstrated, staff training, and implementation support.
- Received September 11, 2008.
