Ambulatory Safety and Quality: Improving Quality through Clinician Use of Health IT

Technical Assistance Conference Call, Slide Presentation (Text Version)

On January 4, 2007, the following presentation was made in a technical assistance conference call regarding Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) RFA-HS-07-006 for the AHRQ Ambulatory Safety and Quality Program. This is the text version of the slide presentation. Select to access the slides (PowerPoint® File, 185 KB).

Slide 1

Ambulatory Safety and Quality: Improving Quality through Clinician Use of Health IT

Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA)
Technical Assistance Call
January 4, 2007

Slide 2

Conference Call Agenda

• Overview of AHRQ Ambulatory Safety and Quality Program
• Overview of the FOA
• Frequently asked questions
• Open forum

Slide 3

Eligible Institutions

• You may submit an application if your organization is a:
  • Public or non-profit private institution
    • including non-profit health care organizations, universities, colleges, and faith-based or community-based organizations
  • Unit of local or State government or eligible agency of the Federal government
  • Indian/Native American Tribal Government or Tribally Designated Organization
• For-profit organizations are not eligible to lead applications
  • For-profit organizations may participate in projects as members of consortia or as subcontractors
  • For-profit organizations that produce health IT systems are encouraged to apply in partnership with a non-profit organization
• Foreign institutions are not eligible to apply
  • Foreign institutions may participate in projects as members of consortia or as subcontractors

Slide 4

AHRQ Ambulatory Safety and Quality Program

• Purpose: To improve the safety and quality of ambulatory health care in the United States
  • Patient safety and quality crises in hospitals are only the “tip of the iceberg”
  • AHRQ recognizes the increasing scope, volume, and complexity of ambulatory care
• The program contains an emphasis on the role of health information technology (health IT)
  • Safe, high-quality ambulatory care requires complex information management and coordination across multiple settings, especially for patients with chronic illnesses

Slide 5

Ambulatory Safety and Quality (ASQ): Four components

1. Risk Assessment in Ambulatory Care
2. Improving Quality through Clinician Use of Health IT
3. Enabling Patient-Centered Care through Health IT
4. Enabling Patient Safety and Quality Measurement through Health IT

Slide 6

Definition of ambulatory care

• Ambulatory care refers to all types of health services provided by health care professionals on an outpatient basis
  • in contrast to services provided to persons who are inpatients
  • usually implies that the patient must travel to a location to receive services which do not require an overnight stay
• Ambulatory settings include:
  • Health care clinician offices (large and small practices)
  • Outpatient clinics
  • Community health centers
  • Emergency departments
  • Urgent care centers
  • Ambulatory surgery centers
  • Home care entities are included for the purpose of this program

Slide 7

RFA-HS-07-006

• Investigate novel methods or evaluate existing strategies for clinician use of health IT in ambulatory settings
• Improve outcomes through more effective clinical decision support, medication management, or care delivery
• Demonstrate the ability of EHRs and medication management systems to effectively move evidence-based information to the point of care, including the development/utilization of machine actionable evidence-based clinical information to providers, and participation in health information exchanges
• Encouraged: the role of workflow and effective use of clinical alerts and reminders, with an emphasis on prevention and chronic illness management

Slide 8

Aims

• While health IT has demonstrated improvement in health care safety and quality in several large health care delivery systems, there has been limited diffusion of EHR systems capable of providing effective medication management and decision support into the ambulatory setting
• Advancing knowledge in the following areas:
  • The impact of health IT on outcomes in ambulatory settings and across high-risk transitions of care
  • Novel approaches to providing high quality, appropriate care through use of health IT
  • Essential strategies for safe, successful, and productive health IT adoption in ambulatory settings
• Span the spectrum from discovery, translation, measurement, and widespread dissemination of strategies

Slide 9

Areas of Interest

• Core theme of clinician use of health IT to improve quality
• Illustrative questions:
  • Providing information and decision support
  • Clinical workflow and the cross-disciplinary team
  • Care coordination

Slide 10

Project Description: SF424

Applicants are expected to:

• Describe the specific health IT application and intervention to be studied, and the expected effect on safety and other domains of quality
• Develop a project design and methodology plan which includes the research design, outcome measures and evaluation plan, project milestones and timeline
• Assess primary and secondary outcomes including clinical outcomes, system-level process and/or efficiency outcomes, using measures suggested in this FOA where appropriate
• Provide an evaluation and data analysis plan, including how the data will be collected at baseline and after intervention
• Outline a plan for dissemination of results and adoption by other sites, including a proposal for widespread dissemination should the project results merit

Slide 11

Highlights of the Research Design and Methods

• The applicant, or its partner(s), must be an ambulatory health care provider organization, or be implementing a health IT system in a provider organization
• Describe the selected health IT or medication management intervention
• The applicant should describe the development of the intervention and the methodology for implementation
  • When possible, the health IT intervention should conform to interoperability standards and use certified products (go to http://www.hitsp.org and http://www.cchit.org)
• The design must include a timeline with specific milestones, covering all major phases of the project

Slide 12

Outcomes measurement

• Applicants must specify the project's primary and secondary outcome measures and how these will be evaluated
• Required, when appropriate to the project aims:
  • The percent of adoption and use of health IT
  • The percent of patients who are receiving the appropriate care for prevention, treatment and medication therapy
  • The percent of eligible patients within the practices who have access to their personal health information
  • Patients' and providers' access to and utilization of quality measurement reports, especially if aggregated through a health information exchange
  • The percent of ambulatory care clinicians within the practices that they partner with who routinely use measurement tools to evaluate their patient's experience, using CAHPS® Clinician & Group Survey (go to http://www.cahps.ahrq.gov)

Slide 13

Highlights of the Research Design and Methods

• Describe how the intervention could be integrated into the delivery of ambulatory care throughout the applicant organization and potentially into sites across the nation
• Discuss the future sustainability of the intervention by host organization after the grant has ended
• Present a project dissemination plan
  • Dissemination plan must be incorporated into proposed budget
  • Additional dissemination grants may be available. Project plan and budget, however, must be complete without additional funding

Slide 14

Privacy and Security

All applicants are required to describe how, in the development and implementation of the intervention, privacy and security issues related to the exchange of sensitive health information will be identified and addressed

• Applicants should describe the resources and processes they will use to assure that these privacy and security concerns are being met throughout the project period.  These could include the inclusion of participating patients in periodic reviews in order to solicit their input and consultation with knowledgeable professionals over the course of the project, as well as a description of any existing privacy or security practices and technology that will be incorporated into the project and reviewed for compliance on a regular basis
• See the FOA for additional information

Slide 15

Three Special Funding Preferences

• Projects conducted in primary care Practice-Based Research Networks ($1.5 million)
• Projects focusing on practices that serve vulnerable populations ($1.5 million)
• Projects that focus on medication management ($6.0 million)
• Many projects will be included in more than one of these priority areas and awards in these areas are contingent upon the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications
• All applications should include Appendix 1
  • State which of the funding preferences for which the application should be considered or “No funding preference requested”
• Section III.3 details requirements for funding preferences

Slide 16

Funding considerations

• Scientific merit of the proposed project as determined by peer review
• Availability of funds
• Responsiveness to goals and objectives of the FOA
• Relevance to program priorities
• Programmatic balance among the ASQ initiative projects
• Portfolio balance within AHRQ and DHHS patient safety and health IT activities

Slide 17

Review Criteria

• Significance and impact
• Usefulness and generalizability
• Approach
• Investigators and Partnerships
• Study setting(s)
• Budget

Additional considerations

• Degree of responsiveness
• Privacy and Security Protections for Patients
• Protection of Human Subjects from Research Risk
• Inclusion of priority populations

Slide 18

Mechanism of Support & Funds Available

• R 18 Research Demonstration and Dissemination Projects
  • To provide support designed to develop, test and evaluate health service activities
• One-time solicitation
• Projected $9 million in total costs in FY07
• ~20-40 grants
• Up to 36 months in duration
• Budget supported by AHRQ not to exceed $1.2 million in total costs (Note: total costs = direct and indirect)
• Budget also may not exceed $500,000 in total costs in any single project year
• Anticipated that size and duration will vary

Slide 19

AHRQ does not accept modular budgets

• AHRQ uses ONLY the detailed Research & Related Budget
• Do not use the PHS 398 Modular Budget
• Applications submitted in modular budget format will be returned without review

Slide 20

SF424(R&R)

• All applications must be submitted electronically
• Please see FOA for instructions on how to obtain electronic forms and register your institution and Principal Investigator (PI)

Slide 21

Eligible Institutions

• You may submit an application if your organization is a:
  • Public or non-profit private institution
    • including non-profit health care organizations, universities, colleges, and faith-based or community-based organizations
  • Unit of local or State government or eligible agency of the Federal government
  • Indian/Native American Tribal Government or Tribally Designated Organization
• For-profit organizations are not eligible to lead applications
  • For-profit organizations may participate in projects as members of consortia or as subcontractors
  • For-profit organizations that produce health IT systems are encouraged to apply in partnership with a non-profit organization
• Foreign institutions are not eligible to apply
  • Foreign institutions may participate in projects as members of consortia or as subcontractors

Slide 22

Principal Investigator (PI)

• The PI should be an experienced senior level individual
• Because of the nature of the project, expertise in evaluation is also a critical need that can be met through the requisite experience of the PI or another member of the project team
• PI should devote a considerable portion of time to the project. If less than 20% time will be devoted, the application must include an explicit justification
• Individuals from underserved racial and ethnic groups and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to serve as PI
• Applications should describe PI responsibilities and background

Slide 23

Key Dates

• Opening Date: January 14, 2007
• Letter of Intent Receipt Date: January 19, 2007
• Application Submission Date: February 14, 2007
• Peer Review Date: April/May 2007
• Earliest Anticipated Start Date: July 2007

Slide 24

Frequently Asked Questions

Slide 25

Are hospitals allowed to apply?

• Public and non-profit health care institutions, including hospitals, are eligible to apply
• For-profit organizations, including for-profit health care organizations and health IT vendors, may be included as consortia members or subcontractors in an application submitted by an eligible lead organization

Slide 26

Can applications be submitted for all 4 ASQ funding opportunities?

• An institution can submit applications to more than 1 ASQ RFA
• Each RFA will be reviewed by a different study section

Slide 27

Does AHRQ accept modular budgets?

No.

• AHRQ uses ONLY the detailed Research & Related Budget
• Do not use a Modular Budget.
• Applications submitted in modular budget format will be returned without review

Slide 28

Are Emergency Rooms ambulatory care sites?

For the purpose of this FOA, Yes

Ambulatory settings include:

• Health care clinician offices (large and small practices) and
• Outpatient clinics
• Community health centers
• Emergency departments
• Urgent care centers
• Ambulatory surgery centers
• For the purpose of this program, home care entities are included as well

Slide 29

Can there be Co-PIs?

No.

AHRQ requires that the lead institution designate one and only one individual as the project's principal investigator.

Slide 30

How much detail should the letter of intent (LOI) include?

• The LOI is to allow AHRQ staff to estimate the potential peer review workload and plan the review
• AHRQ will not provide feedback on the LOI
• Content should include:
  • An acknowledgement of interest in this funding opportunity
  • A few comments on the subject of the proposed research
  • Background expertise of key personnel
  • The nature and role of participating institutions
• This letter of intent is not required, is not binding, and is not considered in the review of a subsequent application

Slide 31

Ground Rules for Open Forum

• The conference call operator will put you in a queue based on call order
• Please keep your questions brief
• We will try to keep responses brief
• Questions that are very specific to a particular institution or situation will not be addressed—these can be discussed individually with a Project Officer from AHRQ at a later time
• If you do not get an opportunity to ask a question, please E-mail your question to: improvingquality@ahrq.hhs.gov

Slide 32

AHRQ contacts

For additional technical assistance, please contact an AHRQ staff person who will be glad to provide technical assistance:

• Scientific/Research Issues
  Angela Lavanderos: improvingquality@ahrq.hhs.gov
• Peer Review Issues
  Kishena Wadhwani: kishena.wadhwani@ahrq.hhs.gov
• Financial/Grant Management Issues
  Al Deal: al.deal@ahrq.hhs.gov

Return to Technical Assistance Call

Current as of January 2007

Internet Citation:

Ambulatory Safety and Quality: Improving Quality through Clinician Use of Health IT. Slide presentation (Text Version) at Technical Assistance conference call, January 4, 2007. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/fund/taimqhittxt.htm

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