HHS Secretary Burwell Announces AHRQ Grants To Address Opioid Abuse

AHRQ Stats: Modest Growth Rates for Private Insurance Premiums

Premiums for private health insurance grew modestly between 2014 and 2015—2.2 percent for single coverage and 2.6 percent for employee-plus-one coverage. Those rates were lower than the 4.7 percent growth rate for both categories in the previous 12 months. Meanwhile, the 2014–15 growth rate for family premiums was 4.0 percent, similar to the previous year. (Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Statistical Brief #492: Results from the 2015 MEPS-IC Private-Sector National Tables.)

Today's Headlines:

• HHS Secretary Burwell Announces AHRQ Grants To Address Opioid Abuse .
• AHRQ's Online Fast Stats Now Shows Effects of Insurance Expansions on Emergency Department Use.
• Hospitals Are Getting Better at Sharing Medication Histories and Reducing Unnecessary Stays, New AHRQ Chartbook Shows.
• AHRQ Research Summaries Support Decision Making About Treatments for Fecal Incontinence in Adults.
• Deadline for Submitting Abstracts to Dissemination and Implementation Conference Is August 4.
• New AHRQ Views Blog Posts.
• AHRQ Study: Hospital Readmissions Less Likely With High- Quality Discharge Planning.
• Register Now: July 21 Webinar To Highlight Federal Efforts Supporting National Quality Strategy.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

HHS Secretary Burwell Announces AHRQ Grants To Address Opioid Abuse

In a July 15 speech to the National Governors Association, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced a series of AHRQ grants to support rural primary care practices in delivering medication-assisted treatment for people addicted to opioids and to study how to overcome barriers to increasing access to such treatment. The treatment is an evidence-based therapy for assisting people with opioid addiction and involves using both medications and behavioral support to empower people to manage their addiction. AHRQ is investing approximately $9 million over three years in this initiative, which will help rural primary care practices provide access to treatment to more than 20,000 people with opioid addiction. The initiative supports practices through the use of in-person practice facilitation as well as technologies, including patient-controlled smart phone apps, remote training and use of Project ECHO, a program that augments patient care by linking frontline primary care clinicians in rural communities with specialist care teams at university medical centers. Visit AHRQ's National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research to learn more.

AHRQ's Online Fast Stats Now Shows Effects of Insurance Expansions on Emergency Department Use

AHRQ's Fast Stats, an online tool that allows users to analyze state-by-state information on hospital use, including the effects of Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act, now includes data on emergency department (ED) visits by payer. The resource is part of Fast Stats's component on the Effect of Health Insurance Expansion on Hospital Use by State. It provides quarterly data on ED visits from 2006 to 2014 for up to 27 states in a given year. Fast Stats is a product of AHRQ's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, a family of databases and related software tools that includes the largest collection of longitudinal hospital care data in the United States. In addition, AHRQ has several tools to help improve ED triage and discharge processes.

Hospitals Are Getting Better at Sharing Medication Histories and Reducing Unnecessary Stays, New AHRQ Chartbook Shows

Nearly half of all hospitals electronically exchanged patients' medication histories with other hospitals by 2013, and unnecessary hospitalizations were reduced by more than 20 percent, according to AHRQ's new Chartbook on Care Coordination. The chartbook measures how well the nation is promoting effective communication and coordination of care, which can reduce unnecessary hospitalizations, repeated tests and conflicting prescriptions while promoting clearer communication between providers and patients. This chartbook is part of a family of documents and tools that support the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report and 5th Anniversary Update on the National Quality Strategy. The report provides an overview of the quality of U.S. health care as well as disparities in care for various racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. From 2009 to 2013, the percentage of hospitals that electronically exchanged patients' medication history with hospitals outside their system increased from 13.4 percent to 49.6 percent. AHRQ provides tools and resources to improve care coordination in various health care settings, including the Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit and MATCH Toolkit for Medication Reconciliation.

AHRQ Research Summaries Support Decision Making About Treatments for Fecal Incontinence in Adults

New evidence-based research summaries are available from AHRQ to help clinicians, adults and their caregivers make informed treatment decisions about fecal incontinence—the recurrent and involuntary loss of feces, defined by the frequency of episodes and consistency of the feces. The summaries present the benefits and harms of both nonsurgical and surgical treatments for fecal incontinence. Because the evidence on treatments is limited, it is important that clinicians and patients work together to decide which treatment approaches might be best.  A research summary for clinicians and a companion brochure for patients and their caregivers provide important discussion points that can most affect outcome priorities and quality of life of the patient. Access the full research review, or obtain more evidence-based clinician and consumer publications about treatment options for a variety of health conditions at the Effective Health Care Program Web site.

Deadline for Submitting Abstracts to Dissemination and Implementation Conference Is August 4

Abstracts are being accepted for the 9th Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health in December. The deadline for submissions is August 4 at 5 p.m. ET. The conference, to be held December 14-15 in Washington, D.C., is being cohosted by the National Institutes for Health and AcademyHealth, and cosponsored by AHRQ, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. This year's conference theme, "Mapping the Complexity and Dynamism of the Field," is aimed at expanding research and bridging the gap between evidence, practice and policy in health and medicine. Conference tracks are behavioral health; big data and technology for dissemination and implementation research; clinical care settings; global dissemination and implementation; health policy dissemination and implementation; models, measures and methods; precision medicine; prevention and public health; and promoting health equity and eliminating disparities.

New AHRQ Views Blog Posts

• AHRQ Dissemination and Implementation Initiative Demonstrates Ongoing Importance of PCOR.
• Evidence in Action: AHRQ Reports Adding to the Momentum for Evidence-Based Care.

AHRQ Study: Hospital Readmissions Less Likely With High-Quality Discharge Planning

Hospital patients who receive high-quality discharge planning are less likely to be readmitted within 30 days, according to an AHRQ study that examined 2.1 million hospital patients in 16 states who were treated for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and total hip or joint replacement. According to the study, ideal discharge planning begins several days in advance, with the goal of ensuring that patients understand basic questions such as where they will go after discharge, what special care and medications they may need, whether they must restrict certain foods or activities, and what symptoms to monitor. The study found an increased likelihood that if readmissions did occur, most patients would return to the same hospital for continued treatment. Researchers used AHRQ's Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey data to measure the quality of hospitals' discharge planning and AHRQ's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project data to study hospital readmissions. The study cited the cost of readmissions, indicating that Medicare spent $17.5 billion in 2012 on hospital readmissions that occurred within 30 days of discharge. "Discharge Planning and Hospital Readmissions" and abstract were published in Medical Care Research and Review. In addition, AHRQ has tools for hospitals and patients and families to help prevent avoidable readmissions.

Register Now: July 21 Webinar To Highlight Federal Efforts Supporting National Quality Strategy

Registration is open for a webinar on July 21, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET, focusing on federal programs that align with National Quality Strategy (NQS) efforts to provide better, more affordable health care. Speakers from AHRQ, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Personnel Management will share their tailored approaches to improving health care quality for all Americans and progress made at the five-year anniversary of the NQS.

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

The clinical course of pain and function in older adults with a new primary care visit for back pain. Rundell SD, Sherman KJ, Heagerty PJ, et al. J Am Geriatr Soc 2015 Mar;63(3):524-30. Epub 2015 Mar 6. Access the abstract in PubMed®.

Initial trends in the use of the 21-gene recurrence score assay for patients with breast cancer in the Medicare population, 2005-2009. Dinan MA, Mi X, Reed SD, et al. JAMA Oncol 2015 May;1(2):158-66. Access the abstract in PubMed®.

Bringing patient-centered outcomes research to life. Borden WB, Chiang YP, Kronick R. Value Health 2015 Jun;18(4):355-7. Epub 2015 Mar 6. Access the abstract in PubMed®.

Geographic and facility variation in inpatient stroke rehabilitation: multilevel analysis of functional status. Reistetter TA, Kuo YF, Karmarkar AM, et al. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 2015 Jul;96(7):1248-54. Epub 2015 Mar 4. Access the abstract in PubMed®.

Implementation of an audio computer-assisted self-interview (ACASI) system in a general medicine clinic: patient response burden. Trick WE, Deamant C, Smith J, et al. Appl Clin Inform 2015 Mar 18;6(1):148-62. eCollection 2015. Access the abstract in PubMed®.

Aging and loss to follow-up among youth living with human immunodeficiency virus in the HIV Research Network. Agwu AL, Lee L, Fleishman JA, et al. J Adolesc Health 2015 Mar;56(3):345-51. Access the abstract in PubMed®.

The role of medical group practice administrators in the adoption and implementation of Medicare's physician quality reporting system. Coulam R, Kralewski J, Dowd B, et al. Health Care Manage Rev 2016 Apr-Jun;41(2):145-54. Access the abstract in PubMed®.

Rheumatoid arthritis and the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy. Bartels CM, Wong JC, Johnson SL. Rheumatology (Oxford) 2015 Aug;54(8):1415-9. Epub 2015 Mar 2. Access the abstract in PubMed®.