SBAR, which stands for Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation (or Request), is a structured communication framework that can help teams share information about the condition of a patient or team member or about another issue your team needs to address. In phrasing a conversation with another team member, consider the following: SBAR is one of …

AHRQ advances excellence in healthcare by producing evidence to make healthcare safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable.

Measures used to assess and compare the quality of health care organizations are classified as either a structure, process, or outcome measure. Known as the Donabedian model, this classification system was named after the physician and researcher who formulated it. Structural Measures Structural measures give consumers a sense of a health care provider’s capacity, …

A handful of analytic frameworks for quality assessment have guided measure development initiatives in the public and private sectors. One of the most influential is the framework put forth by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which includes the following six aims for the healthcare system. [1] Safe: Avoiding harm to patients from the care that is intended to help them. Effective: …

AHRQ’s SHARE Approach is a clinician-led shared decision-making model with five essential elements for meaningful dialogue with patients exploring benefits, harms, and risks of options and what matters most to them. AHRQ offers a free workshop curriculum to train clinicians in skills and techniques to work with patients to make the best possible healthcare decisions.

The medical home model holds promise as a way to improve health care in America by transforming how primary care is organized and delivered. Building on the work of a large and growing community, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) defines a medical home not simply as a place but as a model of the organization of primary care that delivers the …

Topic: Quality Improvement Quality improvement (QI) is essential to achieving the triple aim of improving the health of the population, enhancing patient experiences and outcomes, and reducing the per capita cost of care, and to improving provider experience.

Resource: Quality Improvement Essentials Toolkit This toolkit consists of 10 tools and templates—with instructions and examples—for primary care practices to use for quality improvement (QI) projects. The toolkit supports Key Driver 2: Implement a data-driven quality improvement process to integrate evidence into practice procedures. Tools include:

Patient Safety Culture DefinedPatient safety culture is the extent to which an organization's culture supports and promotes patient safety. It refers to the values, beliefs, and norms that are shared by healthcare practitioners and other staff throughout the organization that influence their actions and behaviors. Patient safety culture can be measured by determining the values, …

This toolkit, developed through an AHRQ Patient Safety Learning Lab, consists of a formal risk assessment and tailored plan of care for each patient. The toolkit has reduced falls by 25 percent in acute care hospitals and is used in more than 100 hospitals in the United States and internationally ...