Nursing (AHRQ-Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)

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Nursing (AHRQ-Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) Introduction Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the main foreign agency responsible for improving the quality and safety of the healthcare system in the United States.

The organization develops tools, the knowledge of the data needed to improve the performance of the health system and helps the health care professionals, policymakers, and patients to make the informed decisions. One of the major concerns that the organization is working on is the safety of the patients.

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Discussion and recommendations Various initiatives are recommendable for the organization to pursue in order to realize the highest standards of safety. The organization is supposed to invest in evidence and research to understand the best ways possible to improve healthcare quality. AHRQ has already been doing this by getting evidence on reducing the central line-associated bloodstream infections, which occur when bacteria or other germs happen to enter the central line associated with the bloodstream infections. Such infections are likely to lead to death and add to billions of dollars incurred in healthcare costs every year. However, the organization is supposed to go a notch higher by establishing evidence-based practice centers and open other research and academic organizations that review the scientific literature on a wide scale of clinical and health services topics and provide the required evidence for the task force. It is also important that AHRQ takes the initiative of supporting research that had been initiated by the investigator (Hassink, Wilfley & Staiano, 2017).

Another measure that can be adopted is the creation of materials that are meant to teach and train the healthcare professionals so that they can be in a better position to catalyze the system-wide improvements in care. The organization should establish a good and continuous relationship with the community of health care providers. The resources such as the training materials and put in place a system that is meant to improve communication and teamwork skills among the healthcare professionals, and these will be used in physician practices, hospitals, and other settings of care. The organization can further develop and implement a comprehensive unit-based safety program (Hassink, Wilfley & Staiano, 2017). The program will be customized to combine the best practices with the improved culture of safety, the science of safety, and putting more focus on teamwork.

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Having performance metrics is also an important way to go. There is a need to generate measures and data to track and improve performance and evaluate the progress of the healthcare system in general. The organization should tap data that will provide information to the patients, providers, and policymakers to track progress, identify the areas that are associated with more problems, and catalyze the improvement of quality (LeRoy et al., 2014). Frequent surveys can be done on the patients so that they can ascertain their level of satisfaction with the services provided.

It is important that AHRQ continue to explore other ways to expand its efforts when it comes to patient safety into other settings that are not necessarily related to hospital environments. Most of the initial efforts were tailored towards improving safety among the sickest or the most vulnerable groups, and this was happening in the hospital settings. However, there should be more emphasis on the nonhospital settings. There is a need to assess the performance of healthcare wherever patients receive it.

With the changing technologies, AHRQ ought to support the use of health IT for quality improvement across all levels of healthcare. In order to achieve this, the healthcare practices should take into consideration some interconnected factors. The interconnected factors include a practice culture with a strong commitment to using health IT for QI. There should also be a high functioning health IT tools that will enable the extraction and tracking of data. There will also be a practice clinical team and staff knowledge and skills that are related to IT and quality improvement. The organization should also spearhead the practice of processes and workflows that incorporate the effective use of health IT for quality improvement. To facilitate the implementation of these factors, the healthcare organizations are supposed to be supported through financial incentives so that they can offer training, capital, and clinician and staff time

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costs related to quality improvement activities. The aspect of transformational assistance should also come in. Here, there is a need to build the practice skills, processes, and workflows, which are likely to include consultations with the experts in IT and quality improvement, practice facilitation, or coaching and ensure that there is access to some of the recognized best practices and technologies such as the registries, EHRs, decision support system, among other technologies. Here, transformations such as expert consultation, practice facilitation, data feedback, and benchmarking will be facilitated (LeRoy et al., 2014).

AHRQ should also consider using simulation to prevent harm. There have been incidences whereby the patients are harmed unintentionally as the clinicians strive to learn the new procedures. Although much of the time, the harm is not serious, some procedures, such as complex surgical operations, tend to have thin margins of safety. Simulations may provide a way for the newly trained clinicians to become more skilled and adept before treating patients. The simulation programs will help in providing a safe environment in which the providers can acquire proficiency in the various clinical procedures. These procedures may include diagnosing melanoma, inserting the ultrasound-guided central venous catheters, disclosing the medical errors, and demonstrating the various ways in which the simulation can be used to develop and design an electronic patient tracking system in the hospital emergency department.

Finally, AHRQ can engage patients more by launching a series of public service advertisements to help patients understand the importance of being members of their healthcare team, improving the quality of care, and preventing harmful patient safety events (Hassink, Wilfley & Staiano, 2017).

Conclusions

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In conclusion, the role of AHRQ is very central in ensuring safety and quality. A lot of progress has already been made in some aspects. However, there are also gaps to be addressed considering the healthcare system's dynamic nature. The agency is mindful of the challenges and improvement opportunities that remain. As much as there is success in verifying and identifying practices that improve safety, more work is also required to integrate the same into clinical workflow and ensure that there is full commitment to providing safe care.

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References Hassink, S.G., Wilfley, D.E., & Staiano, A.E. (2017, January 20). Evidence-based childhood obesity treatment services: Applying recommendations from the AAP/AHRQ Obesity Treatment & Reimbursement Conference. Retrieved from https://ihcw.aap.org/Pages/AHRQconf.aspx LeRoy, L., Bayliss, E., Domino, M., Miller, B.F., Rust, G., Gerteis, J., ... & AHRQ MCC Research Network. (2014). The agency for healthcare research and quality multiple chronic conditions research network: Overview of research contributions and future priorities. Medical Care, S15-S22.