This is a report of a minutes review held in July 2017 by the quality advisory council to determine the activities and interventions of the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The meeting focused on the role of AHRQ in the Learning Healthcare System initiative and on recent progress made in the plan. The participants discussed how systems might be motivated to embrace the principles of an LHS and shared ideas for how AHRQ might catalyze the efforts (Meeting minutes, July 2017, 2017). They also stressed that efforts should prioritize the interests of physicians and patients. Some ideas shared for how AHRQ might catalyze the actions of the LHS initiative include investing in training that provides a bridge between academic institutions and healthcare systems. AHRQ also hoped to refine existing practice transformation methodologies for supporting change at the system level.
AHRQ proposed several projects to promote quality of care in primary care practices. These include the EvidenceNOW program, which seeks to help health caregivers to build the capacity to incorporate patient-centered research findings (Goetz Goldberg et al., 2019). The organization wishes to accomplish this by providing resources and support to practices to help them use evidence to promote care. The other quality improvement project proposed is the Clinical Decision Support (CDS) initiative, designed to help care, teams apply evidence to practice (Mctaggart, 2018). It provides tools and training to help care teams, access and use evidence to make informed care choices.
Quality measurement indicators utilized by CDS are the ability to make quality feedback, electronic health systems, and meaningful use. Concerning the Million Hearts initiative, four key quality enhancement indicators are applied by the EvidenceNOW program: smoking cessation, blood pressure management, aspirin use, and cholesterol management (Meeting minutes, July 2017, 2017). Moreover, AHRQ measures the rates of hospital-acquired conditions, changes in the quality of care, and the use of evidence-based practices in primary care by health caregivers.
References
Goetz Goldberg, D., Haghighat, S., Kavalloor, S., & Nichols, L. M. (2019). A qualitative analysis of implementing EvidenceNOW to improve cardiovascular care. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 32(5), 705–714.
Mctaggart, S. (2018). Clinical Decision Support Systems. Using Medicines Information, 47–60.
Meeting minutes, July 2017. AHRQ. Web.