Register Now: August 22 Webinar by National Action Alliance Will Address Engaging Boards and Executive Leadership in Safety

AHRQ Stats: COVID-19 Treatment by Insurance Type

An AHRQ analysis shows 4.2 percent of patients with any private insurance in 2020 received treatment for COVID-19, significantly higher than the 2.9 percent of patients with only public insurance. (Source: AHRQ Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Statistical Brief #549, Healthcare Use and Expenditures for COVID-19, U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population, 2020.) 

Today's Headlines:

• Register Now: August 22 Webinar by National Action Alliance Will Address Engaging Boards and Executive Leadership in Safety.
• Left Ventricular Assist Device Implant-Associated Infections Have Negative Impacts on Quality of Life.
• New Toolkits Can Help Improve Patient Safety for Mothers and Their Newborns.
• Issue Brief Describes How Artificial Intelligence May Improve Diagnostic Team Safety.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• Using Beneficiary Value Weights Could Reduce Medicare Payments to Small Rural Hospitals.
• Register Now for Sept. 12–14 Workshop on Using Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Household Component Data.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

Register Now: August 22 Webinar by National Action Alliance Will Address Engaging Boards and Executive Leadership in Safety

Registration is open for a webinar on Aug. 22 from 2–3 p.m. ET titled, Engaging Boards and Executive Leadership in Safety. The webinar, sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is part of a series by the AHRQ-led National Action Alliance to Advance Patient Safety. The Action Alliance is a public–private collaboration to support healthcare delivery systems’ move toward zero harm. Board and executive leadership engagement is critical to creating and sustaining a culture of safety. This webinar will feature a presentation by safety advocate and governance expert Beth Daley Ullem, M.B.A., president of Quality and Safety First. Access more information about the Action Alliance as well as materials from past webinars on addressing workplace violence and including patients and families in safety.

Left Ventricular Assist Device Implant-Associated Infections Have Negative Impacts on Quality of Life

A new AHRQ-funded study found that infections associated with left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implantation had negative effects on patient-reported health-related quality of life. The study, published in The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, reviewed the records of 11,618 patients who had LVADs implanted from April 2012 thru October 2016 at 161 medical centers. Within one year following implantation, 4,768 (41 percent) patients developed infections and 2,282 (20 percent) patients had multiple infections. Researchers found that each additional infection was associated with an incremental negative effect on patient-reported health-related quality of life. Access the abstract.

New Toolkits Can Help Improve Patient Safety for Mothers and Their Newborns

Two new AHRQ toolkits are available to improve the safety culture of labor and delivery units and decrease maternal and neonatal adverse events resulting from poor communication and system failures. The Toolkits to Reduce Hypertension in Pregnancy and Obstetric Hemorrhage are designed to reduce obstetric hemorrhage and severe high blood pressure during pregnancy, two leading known causes of preventable maternal deaths and severe maternal harms in the United States. The toolkits include guidance for frontline clinicians and Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health program team leads. They also include resources such as clinical case scenarios, PowerPoint slides and e-modules to help clinicians quickly learn specific teamwork behaviors and ways to reliably apply them in their clinical settings.

Issue Brief Describes How Artificial Intelligence May Improve Diagnostic Team Safety

A new AHRQ Issue Brief presents a framework that guides patients and clinicians on how to successfully partner with safe and effective artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) when making diagnostic decisions. The brief outlines the strengths and limitations of the relationships between patients and clinicians, patients and AI, and clinicians and AI. Using a team-based care approach, this brief introduces the concept of a patient-clinician-AI diagnostic team. As AI and ML becomes more prevalent in healthcare, it is essential for both clinicians and patients to effectively collaborate with AI in the diagnostic process. Access the Issue Brief.

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:

• Anticoagulation-associated adverse drug events in hospitalized patients across two time periods.
• Perspectives about racism and patient-clinician communication among Black adults with serious illness.
• Statewide perinatal quality improvement, teamwork, and communication activities in Oklahoma and Texas.

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).

Using Beneficiary Value Weights Could Reduce Medicare Payments to Small Rural Hospitals

An AHRQ-funded study in JAMA Network Open found that using an evaluation system that takes into account the values and preferences of patients (Medicare Beneficiary Value Weights) as opposed to the current Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program would reduce payments to smaller hospitals with less complicated patients in rural locations. Researchers surveyed 1,025 Medicare beneficiaries to estimate the importance of the four quality domains in Medicare’s Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program. They found that clinical outcomes were most highly valued by beneficiaries (49 percent), followed by safety (22 percent), patient experience (21 percent), and efficiency (8 percent). The findings suggest that the current program value weights do not reflect the preferences of the Medicare beneficiaries, but that using beneficiary value weights could worsen urban-rural disparities by rewarding larger, high-volume hospitals. Access the abstract.

Register Now for Sept. 12–14 Workshop on Using Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Household Component Data

Registration is open for virtual workshops on Sept. 12–14 for people who want to learn more about using data from AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey-Household Component (MEPS-HC). The workshops will include an overview of the MEPS-HC along with lectures on the resource’s survey design and recent changes, healthcare utilization, expenditures, medical conditions and statistical issues and challenges researchers face while analyzing MEPS-HC data. Three hands-on sessions will include exercises on how to use MEPS data for research. Participants may ask questions related to their research.

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

Implementation of lung cancer screening in primary care and pulmonary clinics: Pragmatic clinical trial of electronic health record-integrated everyday shared decision-making tool and clinician-facing prompts. Kukhareva PV, Li H, Caverly TJ, et al. Chest 2023 May 3. [Epub ahead of print.] Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Dispositional optimism and optimistic bias: associations with cessation motivation, confidence, and attitudes. Senft Everson N, Klein WMP, Lee SS, et al. Health Psychol 2022 Sep;41(9):621-9. Epub 2022 Jul 28. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Improving lung cancer diagnosis with cancer, fungal, and imaging biomarkers. Marmor HN, Kammer MN, Deppen SA, et al. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2022 Dec 23. [Epub ahead of print.] Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Understanding factors associated with increases in Medicare Advantage enrollment, 2007-2018. Atherly A, Feldman R, Van Den Broek-Altenburg EM, et al. Am J Manag Care 2023 Apr;29(4):e111-e6. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Expanding our methodological toolbox to improve quality: the role of mixed-methods evaluations. Chandanabhumma PP, Zhou S, Fetters MD, et al. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes 2023 May;16(5):e009629. Epub 2023 May 5. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Racial and ethnic disparities in excess mortality among U.S. veterans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Feyman Y, Avila CJ, Auty S, et al. Health Serv Res 2023 Jun;58(3):642-53. Epub 2022 Dec 9. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Senior services in U.S. hospitals and readmission risk or mortality among Medicare beneficiaries since the Affordable Care Act. Arbaje AI, Woodman S, Keita Fakeye MB, et al. J Appl Gerontol 2023 Jul;42(7):1424-32. Epub 2023 Mar 2. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Associations of pediatric nurse burnout with involvement in quality improvement. Quigley DD, Slaughter ME, Qureshi N, et al. J Pediatr Nurs 2023 May-Jun;70:e9-e16. Epub 2022 Nov 16. Access the abstract on PubMed®.