November 11, 2009
Featured Topic: Health Literacy
Nearly one in two adults living in the United States has limited health literacy, which affects their ability to obtain, process, and understand basic health information, according to a 2004 Institute of Medicine report. The highest rates of limited health literacy are among people who are...
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October 28, 2009
Featured Topic: Oral Health Disparities
Oral health disparities persist in the U.S. population for many reasons, including complex cultural and social processes that affect oral health and access to effective dental health care. Infrequent preventive care and high rates of dental disease are associated with minority status, low socioeconomic status, and unemployment.
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October 14, 2009
Featured Topic: Healthcare-Associated Infections
In American hospitals alone, healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) account for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths each year, according to a 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Implementing infection control practices can significantly reduce HAIs associated with catheters, central...
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September 30, 2009
Featured Topic: Developmental Disabilities
People with developmental disabilities experience chronic conditions due to physical or mental impairments such as loss of vision, hearing impairment, cerebral palsy or autism. Although these disabilities occur by age 22, they usually last a lifetime and interfere with major life activities such as language, mobility, learning, self-help, and independent...
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September 16, 2009
Featured Topic: Worksite Wellness
Despite rising health care costs, employee health is worsening. This combination of factors threatens corporate viability and the sustainability of the American health care system. As the largest provider of health care coverage, employers offer the potential to exert transformative leadership, according to the U.S. Workplace Wellness...
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September 02, 2009
Featured Topic: The Patient-Centered Medical Home
A Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) provides an interdisciplinary coordinated approach to delivering primary care and other services to patients based on their needs. There are currently more than two dozen different PCMH pilot projects and as many different models represented across the country.
The featured...
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August 19, 2009
Featured Topic: Long-Term Care
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has found that one-fourth of the country's 16,000 nursing homes have serious deficiencies that cause actual harm to residents or place their health and safety at risk.
The featured innovations describe quality improvement efforts to reduce high rates of...
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August 05, 2009
Featured Topic: Integrating Health Information Technology with Care Delivery
The Institute of Medicine has recommended that hospitals and medical groups adopt electronic medical record (EMR) systems, electronic order entry and prescribing, and other process improvements to improve patient care and safety. However, physicians have been slow to adopt health information technology (HIT) due to time and financial constraints.
The...
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July 20, 2009
Featured Topic: Reducing Hospital Readmission Rates
Hospital readmissions are common and costly. One in five Medicare patients were readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of being discharged in 2003 and 2004, which generated an estimated total of $17.4 billion in hospital payments in 2004, according to an April 2, 2009 New...
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July 06, 2009
Featured Topic - Service Delivery Changes in Caring for Children with Disabilities
About 14 percent of all children in the United States are at increased risk of chronic physical, developmental, behavioral or emotional conditions that require multiple health care services, according to a Maternal and Child Health Bureau survey. Yet, children with...
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June 22, 2009
Featured Topic: Women's Health
Programs that use community health workers and telephone consultations may help women at-risk for health problems especially in underserved communities. The featured innovations describe the use of these components to advance women's health while the featured QualityTools describe practical aides to women's health.
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June 08, 2009
Featured Topic: Mental Health Care
Half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, and despite effective treatments, individuals typically don't seek and receive treatment until several years later, according to a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
The featured innovations and...
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May 25, 2009
Featured Topic: Implementing Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guidelines
Clinical practice guidelines are more likely to lead to quality care when they are evidence-based and actionable. AHRQ's National Guideline Clearinghouse has more than 2,000 current guidelines that meet specific criteria.
The featured innovations and QualityTools describe a range of guideline implementation...
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May 11, 2009
Featured Topic: Management of Asthma
Asthma is a common disease that affects an estimated 22 million Americans including more than 6 million children, according to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
The featured content describes innovations and QualityTools that focus on asthma education and self-management.
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April 27, 2009
Featured Topic: Prevention Through Screening
The featured content describes innovations and QualityTools that focus on integrating screening and other preventive services with clinical patient care.
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April 13, 2009
Featured Topic: Improving the Health of Obese and Overweight Youth
More than 23 million children and adolescents are overweight or obese in the United States. They are at increased risk of heart disease and stroke, diabetes, asthma and certain types of cancer, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's...
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March 30, 2009
Featured Topic: Teamwork and Communication
Patient safety experts have identified effective teamwork as an essential factor in reducing medical errors. Encouraging team approaches to health care delivery can increase communication timeliness and accuracy and reduce adverse events.
The featured profiles describe programs designed to enhance teamwork and communication.
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March 16, 2009
Featured Topic: Culturally Competent Care
According to the National Center for Cultural Competence, providing culturally competent health care services requires an understanding of:
- cultural beliefs, values, traditions and practices;
- culturally defined, health-related needs of individuals, families and communities;
...
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March 02, 2009
The rate of medical errors in American hospitals remains high. About 1 million patient safety incidents occurred in approximately 40 million Medicare hospitalizations between 2004 and 2006, according to the Fifth Annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study. The Institute of Medicine reported in 2006 that medication errors alone injure...
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February 16, 2009
In today's fragmented health care system, there is a lack of coordination and continuity of care when patients transition from hospital to home or to another health care institution. The featured innovations describe programs designed to improve patient care upon hospital discharge and patient safety during intra-hospital transfers.
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February 02, 2009
The focus of this issue is on using the Pathways model to increase access to health care and produce healthy outcomes. The featured innovations describe "pathways" programs involving community health workers or counselors who implement action steps to connect at-risk people to needed health care care and...
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January 19, 2009
The theme of this issue is innovation in delivering health care services to uninsured and low-income people. According to the 2007 U.S. Census Bureau, 45.7 million Americans lack health insurance.
The featured innovations describe programs that are designed to increase access to and use of health care services.
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December 22, 2008
The theme of this issue is improving the health literacy of patients. Ninety million Americans have difficulty understanding and acting on health information, according to the 2004 Institute of Medicine Report: Health Literacy: A Prescription to End Confusion.
The featured innovations describe health care programs or processes that...
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December 08, 2008
The theme of this issue is linking clinical practices and the community for health promotion. The featured innovations focus on improving service coordination and delivery through collaborative arrangements among health care providers and community organizations.
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November 24, 2008
The theme of this issue is improving HIV prevention, detection, and treatment. The featured innovations focus on providing outreach and community-based services to high-risk populations.
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November 10, 2008
The theme of this issue is using teams and teamwork strategies to improve health care delivery. The featured innovations focus on improving access to care through multidisciplinary and culturally competent teams and evidence-based approaches to teamwork.
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October 27, 2008
This issue focuses on improving the health and care of the elderly. The US Census Bureau has projected that nearly one in five Americans will be age 65 or older by 2030, which will increase the demand for health care services. The featured innovations, by providing outreach to the elderly, preventive services, and care management, may...
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October 13, 2008
This issue focuses on cultural competence, which embraces the principles of equal access and non-discriminatory practices in service delivery. Cultural competence is achieved by identifying and understanding the needs and help-seeking behaviors of individuals and families, according to the National Center for Cultural Competence.
The featured innovations describe health care...
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September 29, 2008
This issue features innovations and QualityTools that highlight the role of nurses in improving health care delivery.
The featured innovations describe nurse-led hospital interventions and home health programs in which nurses play a key role.
The featured QualityTools provide a range of educational resources for nurses and nursing assistants.
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September 15, 2008
This issue features innovations and QualityTools designed to improve the health and well-being of children, adolescents, and their families.
The featured innovations describe programs that can increase positive health behaviors in youth, reduce risk factors, and improve communication with parents.
The featured QualityTools educate health care practitioners and parents about ways...
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September 01, 2008
This issue features innovations and QualityTools designed to improve the detection,
diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses and co-occurring conditions. The featured
innovations describe collaborative models for integrating behavioral health care
with primary care. The featured QualityTools educate practitioners about
common psychiatric disorders, prescribing practices, and community suicide prevention efforts.
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August 18, 2008
This issue features innovations and QualityTools designed to improve the care of the elderly in hospitals, nursing homes and other settings. The innovations describe programs aimed at reducing conditions such as delirium and pressure ulcers experienced by the elderly in hospitals and nursing homes. The QualityTools describe best practices and quality improvement methods to care for the elderly.
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August 04, 2008
This issue features innovations and QualityTools designed to enhance patient safety. The innovations describe programs at local clinics and hospitals aimed at reducing medical and medication errors. The QualityTools present the latest patient safety information from national health care organizations.
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July 21, 2008
In this issue, the theme is preventing and managing infections acquired in health care settings. The featured innovations describe the bundling of evidence-based practices to reduce infections acquired in hospitals, especially intensive care units.
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July 07, 2008
In this issue, the featured topic focuses on the management of chronic illnesses. More than 90 million Americans live with a chronic illness and many live with more than one. Seventy-five percent of the nation's aggregate health care spending is devoted to treating chronic illnesses.
Health care providers and payers have responded to...
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June 23, 2008
In this issue, the featured innovations and QualityTools address health and health care disparities among vulnerable populations, which are defined by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geography, age, gender, and disability status.
The featured innovations describe initiatives to deliver health services that are culturally and linguistically appropriate to Latinos and...
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June 09, 2008
In this issue, the featured innovations address the topic of providing access to care to people in rural and community-based settings.
The featured innovations show how to extend specialty health care to rural and underserved populations by using telemedicine and health aides.
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May 26, 2008
In this issue, the featured innovations and QualityTools address the complex topic of managing chronic health conditions. An estimated 133 million people — or about one in two Americans — live with a chronic condition such as diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, or depression. Of that number, about half experience multiple chronic conditions.
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May 12, 2008
In this issue, we feature Innovations and QualityTools that address patient flow management. Improving patient flow in hospitals increases patient safety, access to care, patient and staff satisfaction, and revenue.
Overcrowding in hospitals can lead to bottlenecks in patient flow, delays in care, lack of continuity in care, and other inefficiencies.
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April 28, 2008
In this issue, we feature Innovations and QualityTools that address patient-centered care. In today's complex, fragmented, and volume-driven health care system, care has become centered around the system rather than the patient.
Patient-centered care, as the Institute of Medicine 2001 report Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for...
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April 14, 2008
Welcome to the inaugural issue of the AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange Web site! This issue includes 100 Innovation Profiles that provide windows into a wide range of creative efforts to improve health care delivery in different settings — hospitals, medical offices, nursing homes, community organizations, schools, workplaces, and patient homes. Start an exchange with the...
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