A Medical Device Daily

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ; Washington) has reported the development of a new Internet tool demonstrating a variety of approaches for health quality report cards.

The new Health Care Report Card Compendium — at http://www.talkingquality.gov/compendium/ — is a directory of more than 200 samples of report cards produced by a variety of organizations. The samples show formats and approaches for providing comparative information on the quality of health plans, hospitals, medical groups, individual physicians, nursing homes, and other providers of care.

“Consumers and providers alike need better information if we’re to get the highest quality and value from our healthcare system,” said HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services . “We’re still learning how to gather and present that information in the best ways, and we can learn from one another. The new AHRQ web site will help with that learning.”

Carolyn Clancy, MD, director of AHRQ, said, “The demand for information about healthcare quality is rising rapidly, and it will be increasingly important for this information to be presented clearly and effectively. Report card developers can use the examples from the Health Care Report Card Compendium to explore the scope and information they might want to cover, as well as various approaches to presenting their own organization’s comparative data.”

AHRQ said that the purpose of the compendium is to inform and support the various organizations that develop healthcare quality reports, to provide easy access to examples of different approaches to content and presentation, and to meet the needs of health services researchers. It also provides related web sites and sample pages where available.

AHRQ offered a variety of caveats about the compendium. It said that it “makes no judgment concerning the effectiveness or value of reports in the compendium but offers them to users for their consideration.” It added that inclusion of a report in the compendium does not constitute AHRQ endorsement of the report in its entirety, or of any element in the report.

Last August, President Bush committed federal health programs to make quality information available to all enrollees. Under Leavitt’s initiative, other private and public employers are likewise committing to quality reporting for enrollees in their health plans, as well as to public reporting on the costs of care.

Conference to boost homecare

Homecare providers, patients, and other stakeholders will gather in Washington today through Wednesday for the Legislative Conference of the American Association for Homecare (Arlington, Virginia) to meet with members of Congress and advocate for stronger Medicare homecare policy.

Speakers include Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), Rep. John Tanner (D-Tennesee), Rep. Mike Ross (D-Arkansas), former Congressional Budget Office director and advisor to the John McCain 2008 campaign Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Acting Deputy Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Herb Kuhn.

Homecare stakeholders will advocate for legislation to protect services required for oxygen therapy patients and efforts to preserve fair competition under the new Medicare competitive acquisition program and also discuss the growing role of cost-effective homecare in Medicare and Medicaid.

President to get stem cell bill

Congress next week is soon expected to send to President Bush Senate-approved legislation that would allow federal funding for research using stem cells derived from human embryos originally created for fertility treatments and willingly donated by patients, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research is allowed only for research using embryonic stem cell lines created on or before Aug. 9, 2001, under a policy announced by Bush on that date. The Senate in April voted 63-34 to pass the bill, called the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007. The measure differs from a House-approved bill of the same name because it includes language that would require the National Institutes of Health to research and fund methods of creating embryonic stem cell lines without destroying embryos. Bush has threatened to veto the measure. Several Democratic officials have said that advocates of the measure appear to lack the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colorado), who supports the legislation, said that if the president vetoes the bill “it will just show his complete unwillingness to look at this research that holds the potential for cure of these diseases.”

New patient safety guide available

ECRI Institute (formerly ECRI), an independent nonprofit organization that researches best approaches to improving patient care, announces the availability of a new guide and CD-ROM to help healthcare professionals increase patient safety in the ICU environment: “Critical Care Safety: Essentials for ICU Patient Care and Technology provides a roadmap for implementing risk management and quality improvement plans in the ICU.ECRI cited a 2005 study that found that adverse events in ICUs occurred at a rate of 81 per 1,000 patient-days; the study deemed nearly half of these events to be preventable.

“This guide provides hospitals with the knowledge to capitalize on opportunities to improve patient safety in the ICU,” said Ronni Solomon, executive VP and general counsel, ECRI Institute. “The wide range of tools and examples presents concrete risk reduction practices to prevent harm.”

“Critical care safety initiatives adopted at hospitals like Johns Hopkins [Baltimore, Maryland] have resulted in improved patient outcomes, as evidenced by lower infection rates, lower rates of ventilator-associated pneumonia, and reduced lengths of stay,” according to Kathleen Shostek, RN, senior risk management analyst, ECRI. The guide incorporates details of these approaches.

The 150-page guide is designed to help facilities assess the ICU environment to identify improvement priorities; educate ICU staff about patient safety and engage them in improvement efforts; develop clinical approaches that improve ICU patient outcomes; emphasize safe selection and use of ICU medical devices and technology.