Practice Improvement Initiatives

EvidenceNOW, one of AHRQ's largest primary care projects to date, helped practices implement evidence to improve healthcare with a focus on heart health and enriched their capacity to find and incorporate evidence in the future.

We invest in translating research findings into practical tools and resources to advance diagnostic safety.

Only 20 percent of the nearly one million Americans who experience a qualifying event each year participate in cardiac rehabilitation despite evidence that doing so saves lives and reduces healthcare costs. We are tackling this problem by partnering with and training over 100 hospitals and health systems to increase rehabilitation referrals, enrollment, and retention.

Becoming a learning health system is a journey characterized by strong leadership, effective use of data in the clinical setting, and a culture and workforce committed to continuous learning and improvement. To assist organizations, we are providing training and tools to help healthcare delivery organizations of every size move towards becoming learning health systems.

Our EPCs review all relevant scientific literature on clinical, behavioral, and organization and financing topics to produce evidence reports, technical reviews (covering nonclinical methodological topics), and technology assessments. Federal and State agencies, professional societies, delivery systems, providers, payers, and others committed to evidence-based healthcare use our products for informing and developing coverage decisions, quality measures, educational materials and tools, clinical practice guidelines, and research agendas.