New AHRQ Views Blog Posts on Diagnostic Safety, Health Literacy

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Today's Headlines:

• New AHRQ Views Blog Posts on Diagnostic Safety, Health Literacy.
• Pediatric Firearm-Related Hospital Visits Increased During COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Improving Home Healthcare for Patients With Dementia.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• Wheelchair Users Benefit from Physical Activity, AHRQ Report Finds.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

New AHRQ Views Blog Posts on Diagnostic Safety, Health Literacy

• Advancing Diagnostic Safety, an AHRQ Leadership Conversation: AHRQ’s Acting Director David Meyers, M.D., recently spoke with the agency’s chief patient safety official, Jeff Brady, M.D., M.P.H., about key issues in diagnostic safety. Diagnostic safety is “the newest frontier in patient safety,” according to Dr. Brady, who emphasizes the agency’s commitment to improve diagnostic safety and explains how researchers are working to better understand diagnostic errors and design systems and processes to reduce errors. 
• Making Progress on Healthy People 2030 Health Literacy Objectives: AHRQ’s support for improving communication between patients and their healthcare teams is the subject of a new AHRQ Views blog published in recognition of Health Literacy Month. Advancing health literacy is a foundational principle and overarching goal of Healthy People 2030, which includes three health literacy objectives. AHRQ Senior Healthcare Researcher Cindy Brach, M.P.P., notes that the agency has developed toolkits and other resources to help organizations become more health literate.

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Pediatric Firearm-Related Hospital Visits Increased During COVID-19 Pandemic

Firearm-related hospital visits involving children increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared with the same timeframe in 2017–2019, according to a study by AHRQ-supported researchers published in Pediatrics. Researchers used data from the Pediatric Health Information System database to compare 2,510 pediatric firearm-related encounters at 44 U.S. hospitals between March and August 2020 with the same time period during the previous three years. They found that 798 firearm-related visits occurred from March to August in 2020 as compared with 575 in the March to August timeframe in 2017–2019.  Researchers concluded these findings suggest that the combination of increased firearm sales, social and economic distress, and children home from school heightened the risk for pediatric firearm injury. Access the abstract.

Improving Home Healthcare for Patients With Dementia

Improving continuity of home health nursing care for older patients with dementia may reduce their risk of returning to the hospital and improve their care in general, according to an AHRQ-funded study published in Medical Care. An analysis of nearly 24,000 patients age 65 and older showed that about one in four required rehospitalization after receiving home healthcare. Researchers said continuity of care can be improved by having the same nurse provide care at each visit, which builds trust and reduces confusion among patients and their families as well as enables the nurse to have comprehensive knowledge of the patient’s health and needs. Continuity of care also could be improved through a schedule of in-person and telehealth visits, they said. Access the abstract.

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:

• A retrospective analysis demonstrates that a failure to document key comorbid diseases in the anesthesia preoperative evaluation associates with increased length of stay and mortality.
• Optimizing situation awareness to reduce emergency transfers in hospitalized children.
• Preventing pregnancy-related mental health deaths: insights from 14 US maternal mortality review committees, 2008-17.

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).

Wheelchair Users Benefit from Physical Activity, AHRQ Report Finds

People who use or may need to use wheelchairs generally benefit from exercise, a new AHRQ report has found. The report found that physical activity was associated with improvements in walking ability, general function, balance, depression, sleep, activities of daily living, female sexual function and aerobic capacity. Although the benefits of physical activity in general are well known, less is known about the impact of activity for those who use or may need to use a wheelchair. The AHRQ report reviewed more than 150 studies, summarizing the evidence for activity in people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and spinal cord injury. The comparative effectiveness review, prepared by Pacific Northwest Evidence-based Practice Center, was commissioned and funded by the National Institutes of Health Office of Disease Prevention to inform the NIH Pathways to Prevention Workshop: Can Physical Activity Improve the Health of Wheelchair Users?

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

Practices and changes associated with patient-centered medical home transformation. Quigley DD, Slaughter M, Qureshi N, et al. Am J Manag Care 2021 Sep;27(9):386-93. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

From policy statement to practice: integrating social needs screening and referral assistance with community health workers in an urban academic health center. Fiori K, Patel M, Sanderson D, et al. J Prim Care Community Health 2019 Jan-Dec;10:2150132719899207. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Racial and ethnic disparities in the delayed diagnosis of appendicitis among children. Goyal MK, Chamberlain JM, Webb M, et al. Acad Emerg Med 2021 Sep;28(9):949-56. Epub 2020 Oct 21. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Understanding variation in postacute care: developing rehabilitation service areas through geographic mapping. Reistetter TA, Eschbach K, Prochaska J, et al. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2021 May;100(5):465-72. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Provider care team segregation and operative mortality following coronary artery bypass grafting. Hollingsworth JM, Yu X, Yan PL, et al. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes 2021 May;14(5):e007778. Epub 2021 Apr 30. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Validation of an electronic trigger to measure missed diagnosis of stroke in emergency departments. Vaghani V, Wei L, Mushtaq U, et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2021 Sep 18;28(10):2202-11. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Trends in serious mental illness in US assisted living compared to nursing homes and the community: 2007-2017. Hua CL, Cornell PY, Zimmerman S, et al. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 2021 May;29(5):434-44. Epub 2020 Sep 19. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Association of blood pressure variability and diuretics with cardiovascular events in patients with chronic kidney disease stages 1-5. Gregg LP, Hedayati SS, Yang H, et al. Hypertension 2021 Mar 3;77(3):948-59. Epub 2021 Jan 11. Access the abstract on PubMed®.