AHRQ reviews updated toolkit for improving hospital quality and patient safety in upcoming Webinar on Tuesday, August 30. Registration is open.

AHRQ reviews updated toolkit for improving hospital quality and patient safety in upcoming Webinar on Tuesday, August 30. Registration is open.

If you are working in any capacity to improve hospital quality and patient safety, this AHRQ Webinar reviewing our updated “Toolkit for Using the AHRQ Quality Indicators” is for you.   Featured speakers include: Pam Owens, PhD, senior research scientist at AHRQ, RAND Corporation’s Peter Hussey, PhD, senior policy researcher, and Courtney Gidengil, MD, MPH, physician scientist, and Ellen Robinson, PT, a clinical quality specialist at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Date: Tuesday, August 30, 2016.   Time: 1:00-2:30 pm ET

->Register for August 30 Webinar

QI Toolkit overview:  To support hospitals in their improvement efforts,  AHRQ updated its ‘Toolkit for Using the AHRQ Quality Indicators: How to Improve Hospital Quality and Safety,’ is now available.*  The QI Toolkit serves as both a general ‘how to’ guide through the improvement process as well as a specific resource for improving performance on the AHRQ Quality Indicators (QIs).   Use of the Toolkit has grown dramatically in recent years , spurred in part by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ use of select AHRQ patient safety indicators in their Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program, Hospital-Acquired Condition (HAC) Reduction program, and Hospital Compare public report.    The QI Toolkit is menu-driven, allowing hospitals to select those that are most appropriate to their improvement priorities and capacities.  Each of the tools – by design – is adaptable to the needs of an individual hospital.   QI Toolkit is organized into the following 7 modules:

1. Assessing Readiness to Change. Includes: fact sheets on the QIs, a slide presentation template to hospital board, a survey to self-assess readiness to change, and case studies of QI Toolkit users.
2. Applying QIs to Hospital Data. Includes: software instructions to calculate the QI rates, and guidance for coding and documentation.
3. Identifying Priorities for Quality Improvement. Includes: a measure prioritization worksheet, an example of a completed worksheet, and a slide presentation template aimed at engaging staff in the improvement process.
4. Implementing Evidence-Based Strategies to Improve Clinical Care. Includes: 25 indicator-specific clinical best practices, a project charter, a gap analysis, and an implementation plan.
5. Monitoring Progress and Sustainability of Improvements. Includes: a guide to support staff in tracking trends and monitoring progress for sustainable improvement.
6. Analyzing Return-on-Investment. Includes: a step-by-step method for calculating the return-on-investment for interventions to improve performance on an AHRQ QI, and an illustrative example of a return-on-investment calculation. 
7. Other Quality Improvement Resources. Includes: an annotated list of related quality improvement guides and tools.

*To download ‘Toolkit for Using the AHRQ Quality Indicators: How to Improve Hospital Quality and Safety’, click here.