New Challenge Competition Offers Prizes for Ideas on Advancing AHRQ’s CDS Connect

AHRQ Stats: Race-Related Differences in Heart Disease Treatment

In 2020, 9.8 percent of non-Hispanic White adults received heart disease treatment compared with 6.9 percent of non-Hispanic Blacks, 4.5 percent of non-Hispanic Asians and 4.2 percent of Hispanic adults. (Source: AHRQ Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Statistical Brief #550, Healthcare Expenditures for Heart Disease among Adults Aged 18 and Older in the U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population, 2020.) 

Today's Headlines:

• New Challenge Competition Offers Prizes for Ideas on Advancing AHRQ’s CDS Connect.
• TeamSTEPPS® Tool for Diagnosis Reliably Assesses Teamwork and Communication.
• New AHRQ Views Blog Posts on World Patient Safety Day, Digital Healthcare Research.
• Issue Brief Describes Strategies for Improving Clinician Psychological Safety in Reporting Diagnostic Errors.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• Register for AHRQ Webinars.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

New Challenge Competition Offers Prizes for Ideas on Advancing AHRQ’s CDS Connect

Four prizes of $25,000 each will be awarded to winning contestants in a new challenge competition designed to solicit ideas on advancing the functionality, value and accessibility of AHRQ’s CDS Connect platform. CDS Connect is a freely available web-based resource that enables the clinical decision support (CDS) community to identify evidence-based care, translate and codify information into an interoperable health information technology standard, and promote a collaborative model of CDS development. The goal of the new challenge is to strengthen the ways in which industry, government and nonprofit entities can collaborate to share innovative CDS across health systems. The competition will proceed in two phases, first calling for design proposals, then live presentations. Prizes will be awarded in four categories: best overall design, best technical functionalities, best value proposition and most innovative design. The first submission deadline is Nov. 22. Access more information about how to enter.

TeamSTEPPS® Tool for Diagnosis Reliably Assesses Teamwork and Communication

An AHRQ-funded study published in The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety concluded that the TeamSTEPPS® for Improving Diagnosis Team Assessment Tool (TAT), an evidence-based instrument, can consistently be used to advance diagnostic teamwork and communication, thus improving patient care and outcomes. In their psychometric evaluation of 360 health professionals at nine healthcare systems, researchers assessed diagnostic teamwork and communication in five critical teamwork domains: structure, communication, leadership support, situation monitoring and mutual support. Their evaluation demonstrated the TAT is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing teamwork and communication among and across diagnostic teams. Access the abstract.

New AHRQ Views Blog Posts on World Patient Safety Day, Digital Healthcare Research

• For World Patient Safety Day, Recognizing the Imperative of Engaging Patients in Their Care. AHRQ’s support of World Patient Safety Day 2023 and the agency’s ongoing efforts to emphasize patient safety as a core value is featured in blog post by Director Robert Otto Valdez, Ph.D., M.H.S.A. This year’s Sept. 17 observance recognized the crucial role played by patients, families and caregivers in receiving the safest possible healthcare. Dr. Valdez highlights numerous AHRQ resources for helping patients, families, caregivers and health professionals work together to improve care.
• AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research Program Is Identifying the Technology To Advance Care Quality, Safety, and Effectiveness. A blog post authored by Chris Dymek, director of AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research Program, highlights publication of the program’s 2022 year in review, Improving Healthcare Through AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research. The annual report emphasizes the program’s efforts to identify digital tools and resources to improve health outcomes, reduce medical costs and create a more efficient healthcare system. Showcased in the report are AHRQ-funded studies that focus on helping patients, providers and health systems make more informed decisions about care options.

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Issue Brief Describes Strategies for Improving Clinician Psychological Safety in Reporting Diagnostic Errors

A new AHRQ issue brief describes strategies for improving clinician psychological safety in reporting and discussing diagnostic errors. The brief highlights specific barriers and challenges to reporting and learning from diagnostic errors, as well as strategies at the individual, team and organizational level to promote psychological safety and organizational safety culture related to diagnosis. 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:

• Physician perspectives on responding to clinician-perpetuated interpersonal racism against Black patients with serious illness.
• Patient and family contributions to improve the diagnostic process through the OurDX electronic health record tool: a mixed method analysis.
• Intensive care unit critical incident analysis as an objective tool to select content for a simulation curriculum.

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).

Register for AHRQ Webinars

• Learning Health System’s Potential To Reduce Patient Harms. A webinar on Sept. 26 from 2 to 3 p.m. ET will highlight the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) Journey to High Reliability: Advancing Toward Zero Harm and Becoming a Learning Health System. The webinar is part of a series sponsored by the AHRQ-led National Action Alliance to Advance Patient Safety, a public–private collaboration to support healthcare delivery systems’ move toward zero harm. 
• Digital Healthcare Innovations to Engage and Empower Patients in Their Care. A webinar on Oct. 11 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. ET will feature presentations on how patient engagement in healthcare allows patients and their families to make well-informed decisions about their health and can lead to measurable improvements in safety and quality. The event sponsored by AHRQ’s Digital Healthcare Research Program will also feature research findings on the use of digital health tools.

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

Association of functional status, cognition, social support, and geriatric syndrome with admission from the emergency department. Smulowitz PB, Weinreb G, McWilliams JM, et al. JAMA Intern Med 2023 Aug;183(8):784-92. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Best Practice Alerts Informed by Inpatient Opioid Intake to Reduce Opioid Prescribing after Surgery (PRIOR): a cluster randomized multiple crossover trial. Rolfzen ML, Wick A, Mascha EJ, et al. Anesthesiology 2023 Aug 1;139(2):186-96. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Adapting a clinical decision support system to improve identification of pediatric hypertension in a rural health system: design of a pragmatic trial. Benziger CP, Suess M, Allen CI, et al. Contemp Clin Trials 2023 Sep;132:107293. Epub 2023 Jul 16. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Patient perspectives on a targeted text messaging campaign to encourage screening for diabetes: qualitative study. Lenoir KM, Sandberg JC, Miller DP, et al. JMIR Form Res 2023 Jan 17;7:e41011. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Continuous eligibility and coverage policies expanded children's Medicaid enrollment. Vasan A, Kenyon CC, Fiks AG, et al. Health Aff 2023 Jun;42(6):753-8. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Sociodemographic disparities in the use of cardiovascular ambulatory care and telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Osmanlliu E, Kalwani NM, Parameswaran V, et al. Am Heart J 2023 Sep;263:169-76. Epub 2023 Jun 25. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Comparison of survival outcomes among older adults with major trauma after trauma center versus non-trauma center care in the United States. Nguyen JK, Sanghavi P. Health Serv Res 2023 Aug;58(4):817-27. Epub 2023 Mar 9. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Using time series clustering to segment and infer emergency department nursing shifts from electronic health record log files. Moy AJ, Cato KD, Withall J, et al. AMIA Annu Symp Proc 2023 Apr 29;2022:805-14. Access the abstract on PubMed®.