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Elder Care News
Online Tools from AHRQ Help Healthcare Providers,
Patients with Safer Care
Primary goal of online access tools is to help reduce
medical errors
 Dec.
7, 2007 - An array of toolkits designed to help doctors, nurses,
hospital managers, patients and others reduce medical errors was
released today by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
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The 17 toolkits, developed by AHRQ-funded experts
who specialize in patient safety research, are free, publicly available,
and can be adapted to most health care settings.
The toolkits range from
checklists to help reconcile medications when patients are discharged
from the hospital to processes to enhance effective communication among
caregivers and with patients to toolkits to help patients taking
medications.
"These toolkits build on AHRQ's investment in
patient safety research over the past 6 years and support our commitment
to research that can be put to use in everyday settings, said AHRQ
Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D.
These toolkits are a major advance toward putting
knowledge into practice and saving lives."
The toolkits were developed through AHRQs
Partnerships in Implementing Patient Safety (PIPS) program.
Researchers who developed the toolkits examined
best practices in a variety of health care settings, including small
rural facilities, large urban hospitals, health clinics, and hospital
emergency departments. They also studied patient safety interventions
among diverse populations, including children and older patients.
While some of the toolkits focus on identifying
high-risk practices, others are designed to help health professionals
reduce medication errors or other patient harms. Examples of the kinds
of interventions that the toolkits promote include:
● The Re-Engineered
Hospital Discharge Project RED toolkit standardizes the hospital
discharge process through a set of manuals and software designed to
improve communication between patients and clinicians.
● The Medications at
Transitions and Clinical Handoffs MATCH toolkit focuses on
identifying patient risk factors frequently responsible for inaccurate
medication reconciliation, including limited English proficiency and low
health literacy, complex medication histories, or impaired mental
status.
● The Preventing Venous
Thromboembolisms in the Hospital and the
Interactive Venous Thromboembolism Safety Toolkit for Providers and
Patients toolkits focus on multidisciplinary
approaches to the elimination of preventable hospital-acquired blood
clots.
● The ED Pharmacist as
a Safety Measure in Emergency Medicine toolkit
focuses on improving medication safety and reconciliation through the
implementation of a program that places pharmacists in hospital
emergency departments.
Not everything, however, is quickly available
online. For example, the tools for Improving Medication Adherence,
requires consumers to email a doctor at the University of Pittsburgh for
information on how to get the tools, which include
●
Training CD-ROMs,
●
Pocket/wallet-sized cards to promote health behavior change
guidelines, and
●
Classroom training materials.
The 17 PIPS toolkits
correlate with the Joint Commissions National Patient Safety Goals,
according to AHRQ, which promote system wide improvements in patient
safety. For more information and a complete listing of
the 17 toolkits,
click here.
To go directly to the tools for consumers
click here.
AHRQ, which is
part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, works to
enhance the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health
care in the United States.
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