Lessons for non-VA care delivery systems from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Quality Enhancement Research Initiative: QUERI Series

The U.S. Veterans Health Administration (VHA) may have a very different structure and function from the organizations and practices that provide medical care to most Americans, but those organizations and practices could learn a lot from the VHA's Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI). There are at least six topics of increasing importance for implementation research where QUERI experience should be of value to other non-VHA organizations, both within and external to the United States: 1) Researcher-clinical leader partnerships for care improvement; 2) Attention to culture, capacity, leadership, and a supportive infrastructure; 3) Practical economic evaluation of quality implementation efforts; 4) Human subject protection problems; 5) Sustainability of improvements; and 6) Scale-up and spread of improvements. The articles in Implementation Science's QUERI Series provide the details of those lessons for others who are willing to invest the time to translate them into their different settings.