Many health care organizations, including those providing care to people living with HIV, have successfully used specific models to shape their quality program infrastructure and to guide quality improvement activities to improve care for their patients.

This resource, developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), briefly provides an overview of the following three improvement models:

• Model for Improvement (focusing on three questions to set the aim, establish measures and select changes. The model also incorporates the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to test changes on a small scale)
• Chronic Care Model (there are six fundamental areas identified, creating a system that encourages high-quality chronic disease management that supports productive interactions between patients who take an active part in their care and providers who have the necessary resources and expertise)
• HIVQUAL Model (the HIVQUAL Model was developed to assist health care facilities that are developing a quality infrastructure which support ongoing processes to improve the quality of HIV care, emphasizing that in order to achieve sustainable improvements in quality, activities must focus on both the structural programmatic level and on the project level)