AHRQ Views Blog: A Call for Action To Achieve Health Equity
Issue Number
776
August 17, 2021
AHRQ Stats: Hospital Mortality Rates for Diabetes
In 2018, the in-hospital mortality rate among adults aged 18 to 64 years was twice as high for type 2 diabetes (41 deaths per 10,000 stays) as compared with type 1 (20 deaths per 10,000 stays). (Source: AHRQ, Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Statistical Brief #279: Diabetes-Related Inpatient Stays, 2018.)
Today's Headlines:
- AHRQ Views Blog: A Call for Action To Achieve Health Equity.
- AHRQ’s EvidenceNOW Model Imagined as Infrastructure To Better Manage COVID-19 and Other Diseases.
- AHRQ Framework Used To Standardize Data From Lung Cancer Registries.
- Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
- AHRQ Promotes Nursing Home Tools During National Immunization Awareness Month.
- New Research and Evidence From AHRQ.
- AHRQ in the Professional Literature.
AHRQ Views Blog: A Call for Action To Achieve Health Equity
The urgent need to ensure equity in the American healthcare system is the subject of a new AHRQ Views blog authored by members of AHRQ’s National Advisory Council. The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly illustrated healthcare’s existing racial and ethnic disparities. With that in mind, the blog post’s authors—Edmondo J. Robinson, M.D., M.B.A., Peter J. Embí, M.D., M.S., Ramanathan Raju, M.D., M.B.A., and Yanling Yu, Ph.D.—emphasize the need to level the playing field by pursuing economic and social justice. To do so, we must fully understand the role of social determinants of health in outcomes and equity. Given AHRQ’s strength in healthcare data collection and research, the authors wrote, the agency is in a perfect position to lead this effort. Only through improved integration and coordinated efforts across health and human services do the authors feel the nation will create a holistic and equitable health care system for all. Access the blog post. To receive all blog posts, submit your email address and select “AHRQ Views Blog.”
AHRQ’s EvidenceNOW Model Imagined as Infrastructure To Better Manage COVID-19 and Other Diseases
The independent national evaluator of AHRQ’s EvidenceNow Initiative imagined in a Health Affairs blog post that primary care practices could use an infrastructure based on the EvidenceNOW Model of external support to better identify, track and manage early and ongoing COVID-19 cases as well as other diseases in diverse communities. The EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health Initiative used a network of cooperatives as a regional infrastructure to support primary care practices that improved the delivery of heart health services such as cholesterol and blood pressure control. A countrywide infrastructure would leverage trusted relationships among people, a personal physician and public health organizations, and would rely on statewide networks and practice facilitators to help clinicians on the frontlines of care. Access the blog post.
AHRQ Framework Used To Standardize Data From Lung Cancer Registries
Representatives from eight stakeholder groups used an AHRQ framework to consolidate 66 unique outcome measures collected by 11 non-small cell lung cancer patient registries. The study published in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Care Network showed that AHRQ’s Outcome Measures Framework may be used to standardize data from different registries that record outcome measures on the same health topic. Registries that use standardized definitions will make data collection and synthesis easier for future research, researchers concluded. Access the abstract and a related AHRQ white paper.
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:
- Adverse events and hospital-acquired conditions associated with potential low-value care in Medicare beneficiaries.
- A systematic review on pediatric medication errors by parents or caregivers at home.
- Prevalence, nature, severity and preventability of adverse drug events in mental health settings: findings from the MedicAtion relateD harm in mEntal health hospitals (MADE) study.
- Applying human factors engineering to address the telemetry alarm problem in a large medical center.
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).
AHRQ Promotes Nursing Home Tools During National Immunization Awareness Month
In support of National Immunization Awareness Month, AHRQ is highlighting numerous COVID-19 immunization resources now available via the agency’s COVID-19 Resources Catalog for Nursing Homes. The resources were developed to help nursing homes improve staff COVID-19 vaccination rates. “Invest in Trust” (PDF, 884 KB) helps nursing homes overcome staff barriers to vaccination. “Take Your Best Shot!” (PDF, 950 KB) includes a guide to present vaccine facts and dispel misinformation during a 10-minute team huddle, as well as a “Learning Guide for Leadership” (PDF, 577 KB) for having effective one-on-one conversations with staff members. AHRQ also offers vaccination tracking and reporting tools that enable nursing homes to monitor COVID-19 vaccine administration data for residents and staff.
New Research and Evidence From AHRQ
- Methods Research Report: Creating Efficiencies in the Extraction of Data From Randomized Trials: A Prospective Evaluation of a Machine Learning and Text Mining Tool.
AHRQ in the Professional Literature
How to identify team-based primary care in the United States using Medicare data. Kuo YF, Lin YL, Jupiter D. Med Care 2021 Feb;59(2):118-22. Access the abstract on PubMed®.
Recalibrating our approach to the management of sepsis. How the four moments of antibiotic decision-making can help. Tamma PD, Miller MA, Cosgrove SE. Ann Am Thorac Soc 2021 Feb;18(2):200-3. Access the abstract on PubMed®.
Patient and family engagement strategies for children and adolescents with chronic diseases: a review of systematic reviews. Smith BM, Sharma R, Das A, et al. Patient Educ Couns 2021 Feb 15. [Epub ahead of print.] Access the abstract on PubMed®.
Race-free biomarkers to quantify kidney function: health equity lessons learned from population-based research. Eneanya ND, Kostelanetz S, Mendu ML. Am J Kidney Dis 2021 May;77(5):667-9. Epub 2021 Feb 11. Access the abstract on PubMed®.
Cultural and structural features of zero-burnout primary care practices. Edwards ST, Marino M, Solberg LI, et al. Health Aff 2021 Jun;40(6):928-36. Access the abstract on PubMed®.
Rural/urban differences in discharge from rehabilitation in older adults with traumatic brain injury. Anderson MC, Evans E, Zonfrillo MR, et al. J Am Geriatr Soc 2021 Jun;69(6):1601-8. Epub 2021 Mar 6. Access the abstract on PubMed®.
A narrative review of current evidence supporting the implementation of electronic patient-reported outcome measures in the management of chronic diseases. Aiyegbusi OL, Nair D, Peipert JD, et al. Ther Adv Chronic Dis 2021 May 24;12:20406223211015958. Access the abstract on PubMed®.
Improvements in antibiotic appropriateness for cystitis in older nursing home residents: a quality improvement study with randomized assignment. Hanlon JT, Perera S, Schweon S, et al. J Am Med Dir Assoc 2021 Jan;22(1):173-7. Epub 2020 Sep 16. Access the abstract on PubMed®.