News Briefs
AHRQ to award $8 million in project funding
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will award more than $8 million in funding for 15 projects over two years that are designed to help clinicians, facilities, and patients implement evidence-based patient safety practices.
The 15 Partnerships in Implementing Patient Safety grants will use interventions that are ready to be implemented now and will have both an immediate and a long-term impact.
More than half the projects focus on reducing medication errors, an area known to be in need of patient safety solutions. Many of the projects will apply interventions to improve health care team communications, another well-known source of errors.
In addition, the interventions are designed to be generalizable to other settings of care.
A key component of the projects is the development of a set of free, publicly available toolkits for health care providers and others that will share lessons learned on how to best implement patient safety practices. For example, toolkits will be developed to help patients keep track of their prescription medicines when they are admitted to or discharged from the hospital.
"Providers across the country will have access to the kinds of practical tools they have been waiting for to implement in their own facilities — ones that have been proven to be effective," said Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, AHRQ director, on announcing the awards.
The projects span a wide spectrum of settings and populations, including small rural facilities and large urban hospitals, clinics, and emergency departments, as well as pediatric and geriatric patients. Because some of the projects involve health systems that have locations in multiple states, the research projects will span nearly half of the states.
For a complete listing of the 15 projects, go to www.ahrq.gov/qual/pips.htm.
Joint Commission adds communication focus
As of Jan. 1, 2006, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) will require hospitals and other health care organizations to document each patient’s language and communication needs in the patient’s medical record, along with key patient information.
JCAHO said it hopes the revised information management standard, IM.6.20, will allow the patient’s language and communication needs "to be easily shared across the continuum of care," noting that research shows language and cultural differences can affect the quality and safety of care.
The standard will not require providers to collect information on patients’ race and ethnicity, as proposed in a draft standard, JCAHO added.
AMA updates its P4P principles and guidelines
The American Medical Association (AMA) has updated its principles and guidelines for pay-for-performance programs. Among the updates are changes that cite the need to pilot test before implementing pay-for-performance programs so as not to penalize physicians based on factors outside the physician’s control.
"The primary goal of any pay-for-performance program must be to promote quality patient care," said John Armstrong, MD, AMA secretary, on announcing the updates.
"Some so-called pay-for-performance programs are a lose/lose proposition for patients and their physicians, with the only benefits accruing to health insurers. We believe that pay-for-performance programs done properly have the potential to improve patient care, but if done improperly, they can harm patients."
At its annual policy-making meeting, the AMA also adopted a policy recognizing the shortage of physicians and said it will work to bring more physicians into the work force and shortage areas, and to create medical school and residency positions in or near areas with shortages of physicians and/or specialists.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will award more than $8 million in funding for 15 projects over two years that are designed to help clinicians, facilities, and patients implement evidence-based patient safety practices.Subscribe Now for Access
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