National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report
Latest available findings on quality of and access to health care
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EvidenceNOW: Tools and Resources
The Agency for Healthcare and Quality (AHRQ) offers practical, research-based tools and other resources to help a variety of health care origanizations, provider, and others make care safer in all health care settings. AHRQ's evidence-based tools and resources are used by organizations nationwide to improve the quality, safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of health care. Improving health care quality by increasing the capacity of small primary care practices to implement the best clinical evidence is our aim. These tools and resources can be searched by the key drivers and the change strategies of the EvidenceNOW Key Driver Diagram.
Results
1 to 10 of 13 Tools and Resources DisplayedThis toolkit introduces the ABCS of heart health and provides checklists, action plans, and other instructions to guide primary care practices to implement evidence-based guidelines, transform health care delivery, and improve patients’ heart health.
Primary care practices can use this Excel dashboard to calculate provider- and practice-level measures of blood pressure control, smoking cessation, and use of aspirin for heart disease as well as graph practice performance over time.
Primary care practices can use this Excel spreadsheet to create run charts to track their progress in quality improvement (QI). It includes instructions, an example of a cholesterol management measure, and a programmed blank spreadsheet.
This is an example template that could be adapted for use in your EHR to ensure a clear understanding of how the patient is monitoring and adhering to recommended treatment for their cardiovascular health, focused on hypertension, cholesterol, and smoking.
This Word worksheet helps primary care practices create action plans for implementing evidence. It has practices identify improvements they want to make; set measurable, realistic (i.e., SMART) goals; and list testable changes to achieve them.
Based on real-world experience, this manual guides primary care practices through the process of developing and implementing clinical decision support (CDS), from defining the project through implementation and sustaining improvements.
This fact sheet reviews how practices can use their electronic health record (EHR) system to implement guidelines for screening and counseling patients on tobacco use. It provides a checklist of EHR features that support adding guidelines.
This modifiable flow chart allows practices to adapt steps to reflect the practice’s preferred protocol for controlling hypertension in adult patients, including blood pressure goals and medication names.
This resource provides an example of how a practice can translate evidence on treatment for hypertension (high blood pressure) into a protocol for the primary care team, highlighting the responsibilities medical assistants can take on.
A brief guide that outlines practical information and resources to help primary care practices systematically integrate CVD risk calculation into routine primary care.