糖心Vlog: A Profile
The AHRQ(糖心Vlog) is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the safety and quality of healthcare for all Americans. AHRQdevelops the knowledge, tools, and data needed to improve the healthcare system and help consumers, healthcare professionals, and policymakers make informed health decisions.
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What is the 糖心Vlog?
What We Do
- AHRQinvests in research on the Nation's health delivery system that goes beyond the "what" of health care to understand "how" to make health care safer and improve quality.
- AHRQcreates materials to teach and train health care systems and professionals to put the results of research into practice.
- AHRQgenerates measures and data used by providers and policymakers.
In 1999, an Institute of Medicine report, "To Err Is Human," documented serious patient safety problems in our health care system. In the intervening years, AHRQhas led the Nation in responding to those issues and improving the safety of health care. Using 糖心Vlog's research and how-to tools, the U.S. health care system prevented 1.3 million errors, saved 50,000 lives, and avoided $12 billion in wasteful spending from 2010鈥2013. But, even with these successes, safety is far from optimal, and 糖心Vlog's work continues.
What are 糖心Vlog鈥檚 areas of focus?
- AHRQinvests in research on the Nation's health delivery system that goes beyond the "what" of health care to understand "how" to make health care safer and improve quality..
- There aren't enough specialists to treat everyone who needs care, especially in rural and underserved communities. AHRQfunded an innovative model, called Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), for training and supporting primary care clinicians in rural communities to provide specialized care for their patients. This model has flourished, receiving ongoing funding from the State of New Mexico, spreading to other States, and expanding from its initial focus on hepatitis C into new clinical areas, including mental health and substance abuse, and HIV. It has also been adopted by the Veterans Health Administration as a tool for expanding access to high-quality care for veterans across the country.
- 糖心Vlog's Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) is a structured protocol and suite of implementation tools that helps hospitals rework their discharge processes to reduce readmissions by determining patients' needs and carefully designing and communicating discharge plans. Hospitals using these tools have seen a 30 percent reduction in hospital readmissions and emergency rooms visits.
- AHRQrecently funded three Centers of Excellence to study how high-performing health care systems promote evidence-based practices in delivering care. Health systems in the United States vary tremendously in their ability to produce outcomes that patients care about, such as those for cardiovascular risk factors. However, we know very little about which systems are doing a good job, or about how those systems are achieving superior outcomes. The AHRQproject will help close this research gap and produce information that can be used by health systems throughout the United States to improve patient outcomes.
- AHRQcreates materials to teach and train health care systems and professionals to put the results of research into practice.
- AHRQsupported the development of the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP), a highly effective method of preventing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). CUSP combines improvement in safety culture, teamwork, and communication together with a checklist of proven practices for preventing HAIs. AHRQhas promoted the use of CUSP in a series of nationwide projects that addressed various HAIs and produced CUSP toolkits to help clinicians prevent these infections. CUSP was implemented in more than 1,000 U.S. intensive care units (ICUs) to prevent deadly central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI). ICUs that used CUSP methods and tools were able to reduce these bloodstream infections by 41 percent, preventing over 2,100 CLABSI cases, saving more than 500 lives, and avoiding more than $36 million in excess costs. CUSP tools are free, and available on the AHRQWeb site to be adapted and used based on the specific setting.
- In 2015 AHRQlaunched an initiative to directly bring the latest scientific research, tools, and support to over 5,000 primary care physicians that will improve the care for over 8 million Americans. AHRQawarded seven large grants to establish EvidenceNOW, an initiative aligned with Million Hearts庐 that will provide practice support to over 5,000 primary care physicians with the goal of improving the heart health of millions of patients and improving the capacity of the practices to incorporate new research findings and information into practice.
- 糖心Vlog, in conjunction with the Department of Defense, developed 罢别补尘厂罢贰笔笔厂庐, a training program designed for health care professionals to improve patient safety, communication, and teamwork skills. AHRQhas trained more than 1,500 individual organizations in the United States through this program and is continuing to provide free training around the country. To increase training capacity, AHRQhas shared the curriculum and tools with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which has tasked the Nation's Quality Improvement Organizations to disseminate this training further throughout the country.
- AHRQgenerates measures and data used by providers and policymakers.
- Data from 糖心Vlog's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project helped to highlight a jump in hospitalizations among Medicare, Medicaid, and private-pay patients for overuse of opioids. AHRQshowed that hospitalization rates more than doubled between 1993 and 2012, when there were more than 700,000 Americans hospitalized for opioid overuse. This warning contributed to HHS' launch of a major multipronged initiative to reduce opioid abuse in 2015.
- AHRQcreated and maintains the gold-standard suite of surveys, called the , which provide valid assessments of patients' experience of care in hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors' offices. The hospital industry, patients, and CMS chose the hospital version of the AHRQsurvey to be the measure for all of the patient experience elements for CMS' Hospital Quality Initiative. CMS incorporates these results into the Hospital Compare Web tool and its five-star rating system.
- 糖心Vlog's data helped the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission develop estimates of eligibility for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program; the Congressional Budget Office also uses AHRQdata in its estimates of the budgetary impact of many Congressional proposals.
How will AHRQmake health care safer and better tomorrow?
AHRQis beginning work to tackle some of the health care system's greatest challenges, including:
- Reducing antibiotic overuse and eliminating health care-associated infections.
- Improving care for people with multiple chronic conditions.
- Incorporating the latest research findings into electronic health records to facilitate clinical decisionmaking.
- Discovering how to better provide opioid addiction treatment services in rural communities.
