Expected Payer for Maternal Emergency Department Visits Among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Patients

AHRQ Stats: Expected Payer for Maternal Emergency Department Visits Among Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Patients

In 2019, the number of pregnant Hispanic women with self-pay or no charge emergency department visits was twice the number of White non-Hispanic pregnant women. (Source: AHRQ, Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Statistical Brief #296, Expected Payers and Patient Characteristics of Maternal Emergency Department Care, 2019.)

Today's Headlines:

• AHRQ Launches Measure Dx Diagnostic Safety Tool
• Speeding Up Use of Antimicrobials Does Not Lead To Inappropriate Use
• Grantee Profile on Sunitha Kaiser Highlights Work To Improve the Quality of Care for Hospitalized Children
• New Interactive Resource Shows Opioid Use Among Elderly and Non-Elderly Adults
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network
• New Research and Evidence From AHRQ
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature.

AHRQ Launches Measure Dx Diagnostic Safety Tool

Measure Dx, a new patient safety resource released by AHRQ, helps health system leaders, quality and safety professionals and clinicians advance efforts to improve diagnostic safety. The tool provides teams with practical guidance and strategies to detect and learn from diagnostic safety events in their organizations. It includes a checklist to gauge readiness for implementation, measurement strategies and recommendations for analyzing data and translating findings into improvement. For more details and information about how to use the Measure Dx tool, register now for a webinar on Aug. 1, from 4-5 p.m. ET.

Speeding Up Use of Antimicrobials Does Not Lead To Inappropriate Use

Giving patients with sepsis antimicrobial medications earlier in their treatment did not lead to overall increased use, a new AHRQ-funded study has found. In the study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers reviewed the records of 1.5 million sepsis patients hospitalized at 152 hospitals in two health systems. They found that median time to first antimicrobial administration for these patients decreased by 37 minutes, from 4.7 hours in 2013 to 3.9 hours in 2018. During the same period, antimicrobial use within 48 hours and the number of days of antimicrobial therapy fell. Overall, researchers said there was no evidence that speeding up antimicrobial timing for sepsis was associated with increased antimicrobial use or impaired antimicrobial stewardship. Access the abstract.

Grantee Profile on Sunitha Kaiser Highlights Work To Improve the Quality of Care for Hospitalized Children

AHRQ's latest grantee profile features Sunitha Kaiser, M.D., M.Sc., an associate professor of Pediatrics, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses primarily on improving care and outcomes for children hospitalized with respiratory illnesses, including asthma. Dr. Kaiser has studied and identified best practices to improve the quality and effectiveness of how healthcare providers integrate new research findings into practice. Additionally, she identified several impacts to clinical workflows and hospital operations during the COVID-19 pandemic that may have affected inpatient pediatric quality and safety. Check out Dr. Kaiser’s profile and the profiles of other AHRQ grantees.

New Interactive Resource Shows Opioid Use Among Elderly and Non-Elderly Adults

A new AHRQ data visualization shows opioid use by sex, race/ethnicity, poverty, insurance coverage, health status, region and metropolitan statistical area among elderly and non-elderly adults in 2015-16 and 2018-19. In 2018-19, for example, the frequent use of opioids was more common among elderly adults who were poor (7.2 percent), low income (6.8 percent), or middle income (5.1 percent) compared with high-income elderly adults (3.4 percent). This interactive data visualization is based on four statistical briefs from AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.

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:

• Analysis of variation between diagnosis at admission vs discharge and clinical outcomes among adults with possible bacteremia
• Long-term risk of overdose or mental health crisis after opioid dose tapering
• Cognitive and implicit biases in nurses' judgment and decision-making: a scoping review

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).

New Research and Evidence From AHRQ

• Systematic Review (draft open for comment): Use of Telehealth During the COVID-19 Era

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

Dashboard design to identify and balance competing risk of multiple hospital-acquired conditions. Makic MBF, Stevens KR, Gritz RM, et al. Appl Clin Inform. 2022 May;13(3):621-31. Epub 2022 Jun 8. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Usability and accessibility of publicly available patient safety databases. Sheehan JG, Howe JL, Fong A, et al. J Patient Saf. 2022 Apr 28. [Epub ahead of print.] Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Development and validation of the trust in my doctor, trust in doctors in general, and trust in the health care team scales. Richmond J, Boynton MH, Ozawa S, et al. Soc Sci Med. 2022 Apr;298:114827. Epub 2022 Feb 16. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Association of race, ethnicity, and rurality with major leg amputation or death among Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized with diabetic foot ulcers. Brennan MB, Powell WR, Kaiksow F, et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2022 Apr;5(4):e228399. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Association of diagnostic stewardship for blood cultures in critically ill children with culture rates, antibiotic use, and patient outcomes: results of the Bright STAR Collaborative. Woods-Hill CZ, Colantuoni EA, Koontz DW, et al. JAMA Pediatr. 2022 Jul;176(7):690-8. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Health care use and outcomes in assisted living communities: race, ethnicity, and dual eligibility. Temkin-Greener H, Mao Y, McGarry B, et al. Med Care Res Rev. 2022 Aug;79(4):500-10. Epub 2021 Oct 8. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Accelerating surgical site infection abstraction with a semi-automated machine-learning approach. Skube SJ, Hu Z, Simon GJ, et al. Ann Surg. 2022 Jul 1;276(1):180-5. Epub 2020 Oct 14. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Implementation of pharmacogenomic clinical decision support for health systems: a cost-utility analysis. Jiang S, Mathias PC, Hendrix N, et al. Pharmacogenomics J. 2022 May;22(3):188-97. Epub 2022 Apr 1. Access the abstract on PubMed®.