Sustainability of an Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Model for Population Health

Sustainability is an important concept in implementation science, yet little about sustainability is published in leadership journals. Leaders are charged on a daily basis with initiating programs that make a difference; however, they are often not well prepared to design effective strategies to sustain their efforts. In a value-based health care industry where facilitating access to care, enhancing the patient experience, improving health outcomes, and reducing the cost of care are imperative, creating sustainability strategies that achieve these results is key. In this article, we describe the successful efforts within an academic-practice partnership to implement a sustainable interprofessional collaborative practice model emphasizing transitional care coordination in chronic disease management for advancing population health with underserved populations. A sustainability framework is presented along with lessons learned.