New Resource Developed To Help Address Burnout in Primary Care

AHRQ Stats: Improved Oral Medication Management Among Home Health Patients

The overall percentage of home health patients who reported improved ability to take oral medications without assistance or supervision after they received home health services increased from 51.9 percent in 2014 to 77.7 percent in 2022. The increase occurred in all ethnicity and race groups, and in 2022 this outcome ranged from 68.6 percent of Asian patients to 79.0 percent of Black patients.(Source: AHRQ, 2023 Chartbook on Patient Safety [6 MB].)

Today's Headlines:

• New Resource Developed To Help Address Burnout in Primary Care.
• AHRQ Grantee Provides Primary Care Practices With Quality Improvement Strategies.
• Promising Approach Identified for Screening Patients With Alcohol Use Disorder.
• Highlights From AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network.
• AHRQ Offers Program To Improve Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care.
• Explore Careers at AHRQ.
• AHRQ in the Professional Literature. 

New Resource Developed To Help Address Burnout in Primary Care

AHRQ has developed a new resource, Burnout in Primary Care—Assessing and Addressing It in Your Practice (1.6 MB), to help primary care teams identify root causes of burnout and implement strategies to re-establish well-being in their practices. Burnout is serious and a growing problem in primary care, and the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded stresses faced by primary care teams. Increasing burnout has been associated with increased staff turnover, reduced quality of care and compromised patient safety. AHRQ’s new resources provides information on:

• Selecting the right tool to assess staff burnout.
• Implementing effective strategies to address burnout that can be tailored to fit practices’ needs.
• Additional resources on burnout from organizations such as the National Academy of Medicine and the American Medical Association.

Access the Burnout in Primary Care (1.6 MB) resource plus AHRQ-funded research on burnout.

AHRQ Grantee Provides Primary Care Practices With Quality Improvement Strategies

AHRQ grantee Abel N. Kho, M.D., M.S., a professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, is providing primary care practices with quality improvement strategies so they can more effectively screen for and manage patient conditions. With funding from AHRQ, Dr. Kho has built multi-institutional collaborations to help smaller practices improve patients’ heart health and address unhealthy alcohol use. He received an AHRQ grant to lead the Healthy Hearts in the Heartland (H3) consortium, part of the Agency’s EvidenceNOW: Advancing Heart Health in Primary Care initiative, as well as the “INtervention in Small Primary care practices to Implement Reduction in unhealthy alcohol usE” (INSPIRE) training program. A founding director of the Center for Health Information Partnerships and the Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine at Northwestern, Dr. Kho also has designed a training program to develop the next generation of health system transformation leaders. Access Dr. Kho’s profile and the profiles of other AHRQ grantees.

Promising Approach Identified for Screening Patients With Alcohol Use Disorder

An AHRQ-funded study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that implementing a multicomponent primary care intervention improved unhealthy alcohol use screening, diagnosis and the use of brief interventions in adult patients, but did not result in meaningful changes in treatment for alcohol use disorder. Researchers used the Sustained Patient-Centered Alcohol-Related Care (SPARC) trial to collect data from about 334,000 patients in 22 Washington State primary care practices. They found the proportion of patients screened for alcohol use disorder and documented in the electronic health record exceeded 83 percent using the SPARC intervention compared with less than 21 percent in usual care. Access the abstract and a companion commentary from researchers not affiliated with the study.

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:

• Strengthening open disclosure after incidents in maternity care: a realist synthesis of international research evidence.
• The impact of an intervention to improve intrapartum maternal vital sign monitoring and reduce alarm fatigue.
• Linking patient safety climate with missed nursing care in labor and delivery units: findings from the LaborRNs survey.

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 Offers Program To Improve Cancer Diagnosis in Primary Care

Registration is open for a free 18-month patient safety program designed to support the implementation of evidence-based strategies to “close the loop” at critical points in the cancer diagnostic process via telemedicine. The program will emphasize strategies to enhance teamwork and communication and improve patient safety culture. Participants will receive technical assistance, coaching and tools to help implement sustainable improvements in their practices. The training is open to adult and family primary care clinics, gynecology practices, community-based health clinics, federally qualified health centers and urgent care clinics. Access more information about attending informational webinars in April and May, and how to apply. The application deadline is May 25 and the program starts in June.  

Explore Careers at AHRQ

Join the team that strives to improve healthcare for all Americans by investing in health systems research, creating strategies to support practice improvement and providing data and analytics to identify opportunities for improvement. Current vacancies include:

• Health Scientist Administrator, Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. Application deadline: April 25.
• Physician, Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement. Application deadline: May 5.

AHRQ in the Professional Literature

Association between use of clinician performance information and patient experience. Zhou RA, McIntosh N, Rajan R, et al. Am J Manag Care 2023 Feb;29(2):e51-e7. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Total cost of care associated with opioid use disorder treatment. Toseef MU, Durfee J, Podewils LJ, et al. Prev Med 2023 Jan;166:107345. Epub 2022 Nov 10. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Efficacy of an mHealth self-management intervention for persons living with HIV: the WiseApp randomized clinical trial. Schnall R, Sanabria G, Jia H, et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2023 Feb 16;30(3):418-26. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Reimagining cross-sector collaborations post-pandemic to optimize care for vulnerable homebound older adult populations. Lee JL, Gustavson AM, Kian L, et al. J Am Geriatr Soc 2022 Jul;70(7):1939-41. Epub 2022 Apr 27. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

How does the effect of the comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model vary based on surgical volume and costs of care? Ko H, Martin BI, Nelson RE, et al. Med Care 2023 Jan;61(1):20-6. Epub 2022 Oct 12. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Near-miss events detected using the emergency department trigger tool. Griffey RT, Schneider RM, Todorov AA. J Patient Saf 2023 Mar 1;19(2):59-66. Epub 2023 Jan 7. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Variation in condition-specific readmission rates across US children's hospitals. Gay JC, Teufel RJ, 2nd, Peltz A, et al. Acad Pediat. 2022 Jul;22(5):797-805. Epub 2022 Jan 23. Access the abstract on PubMed®.

Association of hospital quality and neighborhood deprivation with mortality after inpatient surgery among Medicare beneficiaries. Diaz A, Lindau ST, Obeng-Gyasi S, et al. JAMA Netw Open 2023 Jan;6(1):e2253620. Access the abstract on PubMed®.