Strategies for Building Delivery Science in an Integrated Health Care System

Health systems today have increasing opportunities and imperatives to conduct delivery science, which is applied research that evaluates clinical or organizational practices that systems can implement or encourage. Examples include research on eliminating racial/ethnic disparities in hypertension management and on identifying the types of patients who can successfully use video visits. Clinical leaders and researchers often face barriers to delivery science, including limited funding, insufficient leadership support, lack of engagement between operational and research leaders, limited pools of research expertise, and lack of pathways to identify and develop ideas. We describe five key strategies we employed to address these barriers and develop a portfolio of delivery science programs in Kaiser Permanente Northern California. This portfolio now includes small and medium-sized grant programs, training programs for postdoctoral research fellows and experienced physician researchers, and a dedicated team that partners with clinicians to develop high-priority ideas and conduct small projects. Most of our approaches are consistent with frameworks used to develop delivery science by other health systems; some are innovative. Most of these strategies are adaptable by other health systems prepared to make long-range organizational commitments to mechanisms that foster partnerships between clinical leaders and researchers.