Innovations Exchange Learning Communities

The AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange, in an effort to support the adoption and spread of innovations, is sponsoring three Learning Communities (LCs) that aim to improve health care. The Innovations Exchange defines a learning community as a select group of potential adopters and stakeholders who engage in a shared learning process to facilitate adaptation and implementation of innovations featured in the Innovations Exchange. Each LC convenes participants around a common health care delivery challenge, which represents a high-priority topic area identified by AHRQ.

Learning Community participants work together in an interactive group setting and leverage Innovations Exchange resources to address a defined problem, adopting elements of specific innovations or innovation "clusters." The cluster concept is designed to provide an array of strategies and solutions so that participants can adapt and tailor innovations to their organizations' unique context. Participants receive technical assistance from nationally recognized experts to help them implement these innovative strategies. This shared learning approach coupled with expert guidance helps spread successful efforts to improve health care delivery.

To learn more about each LC's aims, membership, and related innovations, visit their individual pages:

Advancing the Practice of Patient- and Family-Centered Care in Hospitals

This LC is comprised of 11 Florida-based hospitals that have committed to developing a new (or enhancing an existing) patient and family advisor program; in addition, they will adopt one or more additional patient- and family-centered care strategies based on their unique organizational context.

Reducing Non-Urgent Emergency Services

Participants in this LC, located in the Detroit metropolitan area, are collaborating across systems and agencies to identify individuals who use emergency services frequently and to connect them to more appropriate care in outpatient settings.

Promoting Medication Therapy Management for At-Risk Populations

This LC explores interprofessional care in ambulatory care settings, with a particular focus on incorporating pharmacists within primary care teams that serve at-risk patients with chronic conditions.

The collective work of the LCs along with a subsequent evaluation is designed to provide generalizable knowledge and insight about factors that influence adoption and spread of innovations. To share first-year findings from the Learning Communities' practice improvement efforts, the Innovations Exchange developed the document, Developing and Implementing Learning Communities: Findings and Lessons from the AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange.