AHRQ Views: A Unique Effort To Advance Care for People Living With Long COVID

AHRQ Stats: Trends in Dental Visits During the COVID-19 Era

Between 2019 and 2020, during the first year of COVID-19, the number of people using dental services declined by 12.5 percent and the number of dental visits declined by 19 percent. Total expenditures for dental visits declined by 16.1 percent during that period (Source: AHRQ Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Statistical Brief #555, Dental Utilization and Expenditures, U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population Aged 2 and Older, 2019-2021.)

Today's Headlines:

• AHRQ Views: A Unique Effort To Advance Care for People Living With Long COVID.
• Patient Safety Chartbook Highlights Strengths and Weaknesses in the Healthcare System.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• Data Submissions Begin June 3 for Survey on Patient Safety Culture® Hospital Database.
• Explore Careers at AHRQ.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

AHRQ Views: A Unique Effort To Advance Care for People Living With Long COVID

AHRQ’s $45 million investment in clinics that are providing access to care for people struggling with the effects of Long COVID is the subject of a new blog post by Agency Director Robert Otto Valdez, Ph.D., M.H.S.A., and Staff Service Fellow Poonam Pardasaney, D.P.T., M.S., Sc.D. The blog post, published March 15 on Long COVID Awareness Day, noted that the condition can include more than 200 symptoms, including severe cardiovascular and cognitive impairment. The impacts can be debilitating, particularly for underserved or minority populations with poor access to affordable, quality healthcare. The AHRQ Long COVID Care Network, launched in September 2023, consists of nine multidisciplinary clinics that provide comprehensive care, develop and implement new or improved care delivery models and foster best practices for Long COVID management. The network will share lessons learned with primary care physicians, health system leaders and others nationwide. Access the blog post. To receive all blog posts, submit your email address.

Patient Safety Chartbook Highlights Strengths and Weaknesses in the Healthcare System

As part of AHRQ’s mission to make healthcare safer, the 2024 Chartbook on Patient Safety highlights what’s improving and what needs to improve in the delivery of patient care. The chartbook, which draws on data from AHRQ’s annual National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report (NHQDR), uses quality measures to analyze safety trends and disparities across healthcare settings. Its review of NHQDR priority areas describes quality measure trends between 2002 and 2022 in several areas, including:

• Patient-centeredness, in which 11 measures improved and six did not change.
• Healthy living, in which 26 measures improved, 25 did not change, and four worsened.
• Care coordination, in which 11 measures improved, 14 did not change, and three worsened.

Access the chartbook, which includes assessments of patient safety culture and the impacts of COVID-19, as well as links to tools to reduce hospital infections, advance perinatal safety, engage high-risk patients in safe care transitions and improve antibiotic use.

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:

• Creating a just culture in the perioperative setting.
• Medical misadventures as errors and mistakes and motor vehicular accidents in the disproportionate burden of childhood mortality among Blacks/African Americans in the United States: CDC Dataset, 1968-2015.
• Telemedicine vs telephone consultations and medication prescribing errors among referring physicians: a cluster randomized crossover trial.

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).

Data Submissions Begin June 3 for Survey on Patient Safety Culture® Hospital Database

Voluntary data submission for AHRQ’s Surveys On Patient Safety Culture® (SOPS®) Hospital Database is open June 3–21 for hospitals that have administered AHRQ’s SOPS Hospital Survey 2.0 and any hospital supplemental item sets that were administered with the SOPS Hospital Survey. Participating hospitals will receive feedback reports comparing their results with overall deidentified database results. Survey results will also be available in the SOPS Hospital Database Report, which provides average scores and percentiles on the survey items and composite measures. Access the survey and supporting materials and learn more about database submission.

Explore Careers at AHRQ

Join the team that strives to improve healthcare for all Americans by investing in health systems research, creating strategies to support practice improvement and providing data and analytics to identify opportunities for improvement. Current vacancies include:

• Health Scientist Administrator, National Center for Excellence in Primary Care Research Director, Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement. Application deadline: March 29.
• Health Scientist Administrator, Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety/Division of Quality Measurement and Improvement. Application deadline: April 1.

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

High-performing teamlets in primary care: a qualitative comparative analysis. Chen MA, Rubinson C, O'Donnell EM, et al. J Am Board Fam Med 2024 Mar 11;37(1):105-11. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Truth of colorectal enhanced recovery programs: process measure compliance in 151 hospitals. Shah TA, Knapp L, Cohen ME, et al. J Am Coll Surg 2023 Apr;236(4):543-50. Epub 2023 Mar 15. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Understanding clinical implementation coordinators' experiences in deploying evidence-based interventions. Hernandez SE, Solomon D, Moon J, et al. Am J Health Syst Pharm 2024 Feb 8;81(4):120-8. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Changes in bronchiolitis characteristics during the COVID-19 pandemic: a description of pediatric emergency department visits in a community hospital, 2019-2021. Jurlina A, Maul T, Hunsaker P, et al. Clin Pediatr 2024 Jan;63(1):73-9. Epub 2023 Oct 23. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Implementation and evaluation of Exercise is Medicine in primary care clinics within a large academic health system. Dayao JKO, Duffy CEL, Cristiano AM, et al. Fam Med Community Health 2024 Feb 2;12(1):e002608. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Functional outcomes after localized prostate cancer treatment. Al Hussein Al Awamlh B, Wallis CJD, Penson DF, et al. JAMA 2024 Jan 23;331(4):302-17. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Leveraging population health datasets to advance maternal health research. Beck D, Hall S, Costa DK, et al. Matern Child Health J 2023 Oct;27(10):1683-8. Epub 2023 Jun 9. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Patients' and physicians' beliefs and attitudes towards integrating personalized risk estimates into patient education about left ventricular assist device therapy. Kostick-Quenet KM, Lang B, Dorfman N, et al. Patient Educ Couns 2024 May;122:108157. Epub 2024 Jan 24. Access the abstract on PubMed®.