The Site Implementation Progress Report (SIPREP): A New VA Operations-Facing "Product"

Miech EJ, Damush TM. The Site Implementation Progress Report (SIPREP): A New VA Operations-Facing "Product". Implementation Facilitation Learning Collaborative Call [Cyberseminar]. QUERI. 2018 Jun 6.

The "Site Implementation Progress Report," or SIPREP, is a "5-in-1" systemic approach to implementation evaluation, which includes an implementation progress report, a diagnostic tool, a how-to manual, a knowledge base, and a series of focused checklists all in a single, unified product. The SIPREP is built around a set of "milestones," significant implementation achievements that occur in a chronological order (e.g., facility agrees to participate in program, facility kickoff, facility enrolls 1st patient, facility enrolls 10th patient, etc.). In the SIPREP, "stages" indicate how to get from one milestone to the next; for example, Stage 2 represents "Getting from Kickoff to Enrolling 1st Patient." Each stage has a dedicated "grid" that maps out the activities that need to be completed by whom for that stage, and in what order. As a facility completes more and more activities, the cells change colors, providing a visual guide to implementation progress both within and across sites. The SIPREP is dynamic, telescoping (can zoom in or out), both big-picture and ultra-detailed, addresses different needs of different audiences, relevant both to current sites and future sites, both describes and explains how to implement the program, makes ample use of visualizations, reveals what is not happening, and built on VA platform behind VA firewall with invite-only access. There is a strong tie-in to facilitation in that the SIPREP makes the work of internal facilitators explicit at the facility level (i.e., who does what, and when) and provides a new way for facilitators external to a facility (e.g., the national program team, etc) to understand what is happening (and not happening) at the facility level and pinpoint areas where extra support and intervention might be focused to help keep implementation moving forward. This tool could likewise constitute part of an "audit and feedback" implementation strategy, providing a facility with ongoing, specific and actionable feedback on its degree of implementation achieved.