LAICO’s collaborative series under the banner LEAP, aims to bring about improvements in specific functional areas of eye hospitals through a collaborative method. This approach is based on the highly effective and popular ‘Breakthrough Series’ model developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), USA. The format has been customized for eye care based on the rich experience of over four decades from Aravind Eye Hospitals. In addition, these collaborative employ the principles of  Model for Improvement, PDSA cycles, continuous process improvement as strategies to achieve partner aims.

Leap Series I : Enhancing Cataract Surgery Intervention Rate

The first series in LEAP focusing on enhancing cataract surgical intervention rate amongst the paying walk-in patients ended in September 2019. The goal was to ensure that all those who will benefit from cataract surgery, end up getting it. The year-long collaborative work showed that the intervention rate, i.e. the cataract surgeries as a proportion of outpatients, went up significantly in hospitals that were able to implement the improvement strategies. Overall, the participating hospitals were able to increase the intervention rate resulting in a total 1,711 additional cataract surgeries.

Leap Series II: Increasing Efficiency of Outreach Services

In July 2019, the second collaborative was rolled out with a focus to enhance the efficiency of outreach services. Three hospitals enrolled in this series and two learning sessions were conducted, in June and December respectively. Within the first 3 months of engagement in this collaborative, the average outpatients per camp increased by 18% and surgeries by 12% compared to the baseline of 133 outpatients and 26 surgeries respectively. Because of this enhanced efficiency, even with the same number of camps, the hospitals surpassed the baseline volumes.