New AHRQ Views Blog Post: AHRQ Dives Into a Dialogue With Health Data Community

AHRQ Stats: Medicaid Coverage for Pediatric Emergency Care

Among patients younger than age 18, the share of emergency department visits covered by Medicaid increased from 45 percent in 2006 to 62 percent in 2015. (Source: AHRQ, Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Statistical Brief #238, Trends in Hospital Emergency Department Visits by Age and Payer, 2006–2015.)

Today's Headlines:

• New AHRQ Views Blog Post: AHRQ Dives Into a Dialogue With Health Data Community.
• Results Available From 2018 Survey on Safety Culture in Medical Offices.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• Featured Case Study: Mississippi Hospital Reduces Patient Falls by 25 Percent Using AHRQ Program .
• Featured Studies on the Nation's Health Systems.
• New Research and Evidence From AHRQ.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

New AHRQ Views Blog Post: AHRQ Dives Into a Dialogue With Health Data Community

Director Gopal Khanna, M.B.A., shares highlights from a recent AHRQ-sponsored listening session that preceded AcademyHealth’s 2018 Health Datapalooza conference. The session, which explored the potential of data to address complex health care challenges such as the opioid epidemic, included presentations by Mona Siddiqui, M.D., HHS Chief Data Officer for the Chief Technology Officer, and Anand Parekh, M.D., Medical Advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center.  Access the blog post, which includes video interviews with listening session participants.

Results Available From 2018 Survey on Safety Culture in Medical Offices

Results are available from AHRQ’s 2018 Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety Culture (SOPS). The database is an important tool for medical practices to learn how their patient safety culture compares with similar practices that responded to the survey. Among results compiled from approximately 35,500 providers and staff in 2,400 U.S. medical offices:

• 86 percent of respondents indicated that patients were reminded about appointments and, when appropriate, contacted about follow-up care.
• 46 percent of respondents indicated that enough staffing was available to handle the patient load and maintain a work pace that was not hectic.

Access the executive summary (PDF 1.3 MB) and the full report (PDF 1.6 MB) for additional survey results related to medical office size, ownership, clinical specialties and other areas, as well as information about planning for improvement.

Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network

AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network (PSNet) highlights journal articles, books and tools related to patient safety. Articles featured this week include:

• Physical and verbal violence against health care workers.
• The first U.S. study on nurses' evidence-based practice competencies indicates major deficits that threaten healthcare quality, safety, and patient outcomes.
• Association between workarounds and medication administration errors in bar-code-assisted medication administration in hospitals.

Review additional new publications in PSNet’s current issue or access recent cases and commentaries in AHRQ’s WebM&M (Morbidity and Mortality Rounds on the Web).

Featured Case Study: Mississippi Hospital Reduces Patient Falls by 25 Percent Using AHRQ Program

Anderson Regional Medical Center, a 260-bed hospital in Meridian, Mississippi, reduced patient falls by 25 percent after implementing AHRQ’s Preventing Falls in Hospitals Training Program in 2015. The reduction in patient falls resulted in an estimated $238,000 savings in medical costs. Access the Impact Case Study.

Featured Studies on the Nation's Health Systems

AHRQ's Comparative Health System Performance Initiative funds studies about how health care delivery systems promote evidence-based practices and patient-centered outcomes research in delivering care. Publications include:

• Implementation science: a potential catalyst for delivery system reform.
• The hidden roles that management partners play in accountable care organizations.
• Accountability across the continuum: the participation of postacute care providers in accountable care organizations.

Access the initiative's Compendium of U.S. Health Systems, 2016, the first publicly available database that gives researchers, policymakers and health care administrators a snapshot of the nation's health systems.

New Research and Evidence From AHRQ

• Physiologic Predictors of Severe Injury: Systematic Review.

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

Incidence and trends of sepsis in US hospitals using clinical vs claims data, 2009-2014. Rhee C, Dantes R, Epstein L, et al. JAMA 2017 Oct 3;318(13):1241-9. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Offsetting patient-centered medical homes investment costs through per-member-per-month or Medicare Merit-based Incentive Payment System incentive payments. da Graca B, Ogola GO, Fullerton C, et al. J Ambul Care Manage 2018 Apr/Jun;41(2):105-13. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Hospital readmissions after elective lower extremity vascular procedures. Vogel TR, Smith JB, Kruse RL. Vascular 2017 Jan 1:1708538117728637. [Epub ahead of print.] Access the abstract on PubMed®.

"They need to have an understanding of why they're coming here and what the outcomes might be." Clinician perspectives on goals of care for patients discharged from hospitals to skilled nursing facilities. Feder SL, Britton MC, Chaudhry SI. J Pain Symptom Manage 2018 Mar;55(3):930-7. Epub 2017 Oct 31. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

A kidney offer acceptance decision tool to inform the decision to accept an offer or wait for a better kidney. Wey A, Salkowski N, Kremers WK, et al. Am J Transplant 2018 Apr;18(4):897-906. Epub 2017 Oct 17. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Developing a similarity searching module for patient safety event reporting system using semantic similarity measures. Kang H, Gong Y. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak 2017 Jul 5;17(Suppl 2):75. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Completeness and timeliness of notifiable disease reporting: a comparison of laboratory and provider reports submitted to a large county health department. Dixon BE, Zhang Z, Lai PTS, et al. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak 2017 Jun 23;17(1):87. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Uninsured primary care visit disparities under the Affordable Care Act. Angier H, Hoopes M, Marino M, et al. Ann Fam Med 2017 Sep;15(5):434-42. Access the abstract on PubMed®.