AHRQ Electronic Newsletter, May 24, 2016

May 24, 2016, Issue #519 AHRQ Stats: Exercise Advice From Health Professionals The portion of obese adults between ages 18 and 44 who received exercise advice from a health professional increased from 47 percent in 2002 to 52 percent in 2012. (Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2014 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, Chartbook on Healthy Living.) Today's Headlines: AHRQ Toolkit Helps Health Care Organizations and Providers Communicate With Patients and Families When Harm Occurs New Tool Identifies Harms Among Children Due to Hospital Care Patient Reporting of Safety Events Feasible, Prototype Shows New AHRQ Views Blog Posts AHRQ Publishes Notice Prioritizing Research on Patient Data To Improve Ambulatory Care Featured Case Study: AHRQ Resources Promote Health Literacy and Evaluate Patient Experiences at Johns Hopkins AHRQ Toolkit Helps Health Care Organizations and Providers Communicate With Patients and Families When Harm Occurs A new online toolkit from AHRQ is designed to help hospital and health system leaders and clinicians communicate accurately and openly with patients and their families when something goes wrong with their care. The toolkit will help expand use of an AHRQ-developed communication and resolution process called Communication and Optimal Resolution, or CANDOR, which gives hospitals and health systems the tools to respond immediately when a patient is harmed and to promote candid, empathetic communication and timely resolution for patients and caregivers. The toolkit, which includes facilitator notes, slides and online videos, enables health care organizations to make care safer by implementing the CANDOR process to encourage proactive, open communication with patients and their families when harm occurs. For more information, read the press release and the blog post by AHRQ Director Andy Bindman, M.D. New Tool Identifies Harms Among Children Due to Hospital Care A newly developed “trigger tool”shows promise in flagging adverse events in children, according to a new study published in the May edition of Pediatrics. The Global Assessment of Pediatric Patient Safety (GAPPS) trigger tool, which can use electronic data to identify adverse events in pediatric patients, was developed and tested with AHRQ support. Trigger tools are commonly used to identify adverse events after they occur. A trigger tool scans a health record system and flags entries that indicate that an adverse event may have occurred. However, most existing trigger tools are not designed for pediatric patients. Read the abstract for more information about how this tool was developed and tested and its potential impact on pediatric patient safety. Patient Reporting of Safety Events Feasible, Prototype Shows An AHRQ-funded contract to develop and pilot test a prototype for capturing patient-reported patient safety events has demonstrated that such a system is challenging but feasible. Researchers were able to capture information on safety events from the patient and family perspective – a viewpoint that has previously been unavailable to hospitals and others. Most patient safety event reporting systems capture information from the clinician or provider perspective. Including the patient perspective gives patient safety experts a more complete understanding of the event that happened. The Health Care Safety Hotline was developed and implemented in two hospital systems over 15 months. A total of 37 reports were successfully submitted by patients. A final report from the project includes lessons learned and the materials used to develop and deploy the prototype. Read about the report’s findings and their importance to patient safety in a blog post by Jeff Brady, M.D., M.P.H., director of AHRQ’s Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. New AHRQ Views Blog Posts Working Together To Tackle Health Care's "Voltage Drops" Health Datapalooza Highlights Key Challenges for Ongoing Research AHRQ Publishes Notice Prioritizing Research on Patient Data To Improve Ambulatory Care AHRQ has published a Special Emphasis Notice to support research on how health information technology can facilitate the collection and use of patient-reported outcomes and patient contextual data to improve the quality of care in ambulatory settings. Although collection of patient-reported outcomes and contextual data is advancing rapidly, little is known about how to best use the information in primary care and with diverse populations in ambulatory settings. Patient-reported data provide important information for clinical decision making, quality measurement, practice improvement and research. This special emphasis notice will support work to understand how patient-reported outcomes can be used to improve quality and outcomes in clinical care. Featured Case Study: AHRQ Resources Promote Health Literacy and Evaluate Patient Experiences at Johns Hopkins Johns Hopkins HealthCare uses brochures and videos from AHRQ’s “Questions Are the Answer” campaign to promote effective communication between medical providers and 320,000 health plan members. Johns Hopkins also uses AHRQ's Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit and Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS)®.Read the case study. AHRQ in the Professional Literature Development and validation of prognostic indices for recovery of physical functioning following stroke: part 1. Bates BE, Xie D, Kwong PL, et al. PM R. 2015 Jul;7(7):685-98. Epub 2015 Jan 26. Access the abstract in PubMed®. Development and validation of prognostic indices for recovery of physical functioning following stroke: part 2. Bates BE, Xie D, Kwong PL, et al. PM R. 2015 Jul;7(7):699-710. Epub 2015 Jan 26. Access the abstract in PubMed®. Bringing it home: expanding the local reach of dissemination and implementation training via a university-based workshop. Morrato EH, Rabin B, Proctor J, et al. Implement Sci. 2015 Jul 4;10:94. Access the abstract in PubMed®. Electrocardiogram in preparticipation athletic evaluations among insured youths. Burns KM, Encinosa WE, Pearson GD, et al. J Pediatr. 2015 Oct;167(4):804-9.e1. Epub 2015 Jul 3. Access the abstract in PubMed®. Sometimes more is more: iterative participatory design of infographics for engagement of community members with varying levels of health literacy. Arcia A, Suero-Tejeda N, Bales ME, et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2016 Jan;23(1):174-83. Epub 2015 Jul 13. Access the abstract in PubMed®. Oral mechanical bowel preparation for colorectal surgery: systematic review and meta-analysis. Dahabreh IJ, Steele DW, Shah N, et al. Dis Colon Rectum. 2015 Jul;58(7):698-707. Access the abstract in PubMed®. The Affordable Care Act and expanded insurance eligibility among nonelderly adult cancer survivors. Davidoff AJ, Hill SC, Bernard D, et al. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2015 Jul 1;107(9). Print 2015 Sep. Access the abstract in PubMed®. Health promotion text messaging preferences and acceptability among the medically underserved. Albright K, Krantz MJ, Backlund Jarquin P, et al. Health Promot Pract. 2015 Jul;16(4):523-32. Epub 2015 Jan 13. Access the abstract in PubMed®. Contact Information Please address comments and questions about the AHRQ Electronic Newsletter to Bruce Seeman at: (301) 427-1998 or Bruce.Seeman@ahrq.hhs.gov.