Measuring the Success of a Project ECHO Implementation: Results from an International e-Delphi Study

Abstract

There is an increasing global need for organisations to utilise high-quality telementoring models to support workforce development and mentorship. Project ECHO is a validated telementoring model that has been adopted by over 700 organisations globally across multiple sectors. To date there is no consolidated list of success indicators by which organisational teams can assess or benchmark their implementation of Project ECHO across sectors. An e-Delphi methodology was adopted to facilitate a comprehensive means of identifying indicators that could be used to assess the implementations of Project ECHO globally. This paper presents a consolidated framework of indicators that support teams to assess their implementation of Project ECHO. These indicators have been derived by an international panel of experts across the healthcare, education, and university sectors. The final framework identified 54 distinct indicators across four domains: (1) spoke participant engagement, (2) ECHO Hub/teleECHO Network design and operation, (3) ECHO Hub team engagement and (4) Local Impact. This paper highlights that Project ECHO implementation indicators can vary between being dynamic, static, and iterative, depending on the phase of implementation. These findings are significant because they are generalisable to any organisation/sector implementing Project ECHO or similar telementoring models.