AHRQ Electronic Newsletter, Jaunary 13, 2015, Issue #454

January 13, 2015, Issue #454 AHRQ Stats: Medicaid and Private Insurance Mood disorders were the most common principal diagnosis for hospital medical and surgical stays for Medicaid patients (6 percent of stays) and for uninsured patients (5 percent of stays) in 2012. This analysis excludes hospital stays for maternal and neonatal conditions. (Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project Statistical Brief #182: Characteristics of Medicaid and Uninsured Hospitalizations, 2012.) Today's Headlines: AHRQ-Funded Studies Find Primary Care Health Risk Assessment Tool Lacks Patients’ Support and Increases Visit Times Easy-to-Understand Medicine Instructions Available From AHRQ in Six Languages AHRQ Updates Review on Therapies for Clinically Localized Prostate Cancer Register Now: January 22 Webcast on New AHRQ CAHPS Child Hospital Survey AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange Focuses on Advancing Patient- and Family-Centered Care in Hospitals AHRQ-Funded Studies Find Primary Care Health Risk Assessment Tool Lacks Patients’ Support and Increases Visit Times Two AHRQ-funded studies that examined the use of a health risk assessment tool in primary care found that the tool may be able to identify behavioral and psychological health risks and lead to improved counseling and behavioral change, and that assessments could be implemented in routine care. However, the studies also found that patients were generally unwilling to discuss their risk factors and that counseling by clinicians would require an additional 28 minutes per patient visit as well as additional staff time. The first study measured patients’ readiness for behavior change to improve their health, desire to discuss their health risks and perceived importance of 13 health risk factors identified in the assessment, known as the My Own Health Report. The second study evaluated whether primary care practices could implement My Own Health Report, typically electronically, as part of providing routine care. The study and abstract titled “Frequency and Prioritization of Patient Health Risks from a Structured Health Risk Assessment,” and the study and abstract titled “Adoption, Reach, Implementation and Maintenance of a Behavioral and Mental Health Assessment in Primary Care” appeared in the November/December 2014 issue of the Annals of Family Medicine. Easy-to-Understand Medicine Instructions Available From AHRQ in Six Languages New standardized instructions that improve patients’ understanding of when to take medications, and possibly reduce errors while improving adherence, are available from the AHRQ Pharmacy Health Literacy Center. The instructions for taking pills follow the Universal Medication Schedule, which simplifies complex medicine regimens by using standard time periods (morning, noon, evening and bedtime). They are available in English, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese. The instructions were developed in response to research that has shown that more explicit prescription medicine instructions are better understood than instructions that are vague or require an individual to calculate when to take a medicine. The AHRQ Pharmacy Health Literacy Center provides pharmacists with tools and other resources, such as the Pharmacy Health Literacy Assessment Tool. AHRQ Updates Review on Therapies for Clinically Localized Prostate Cancer AHRQ has released an update of a 2008 research review on therapies for clinically localized prostate cancer. According to the review, more evidence is needed to evaluate comparative risks and benefits of therapies. The findings are similar to those in the 2008 review, which found that no single therapy can be considered the preferred treatment for localized prostate cancer because of limitations in the body of evidence as well as the likely tradeoffs a patient must make between estimated treatment effectiveness, necessity and adverse effects. The full report and executive summary of “Therapies for Clinically Localized Prostate Cancer: Update of a 2008 Systematic Review,” are available on AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program website. Register Now: January 22 Webcast on New AHRQ CAHPS Child Hospital Survey AHRQ is hosting a webcast January 22 from 1 to 2 p.m. ET about the new child version of the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) Hospital Survey. The CAHPS Child Hospital Survey (Child HCAHPS) is designed to assess the experiences of pediatric patients and their parents or guardians with inpatient care. Developed by the Center of Excellence for Pediatric Quality Measurement at Boston Children’s Hospital in partnership with AHRQ’s CAHPS Consortium, Child HCAHPS covers most of the topics addressed by the adult version of the Hospital Survey as well as topics particularly relevant to pediatric care. Registration is open. For comments or questions, contact the CAHPS User Network via email or phone, 800-492-9261. AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange Focuses on Advancing Patient- and Family-Centered Care in Hospitals AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange is focusing on its new Patient- and Family-Centered Care Learning Community, featuring profiles related to advancing the practice of patient- and family-centered care in hospital settings. One profile describes a patient advisory program at Georgia Regents Medical Center in Augusta in which current and former patients and family members participate in a variety of patient advisory councils and on every clinic, department and hospital committee, providing their perspectives on potential improvements and their input into key operational and strategic decisions. The program has contributed to improvements in patient satisfaction and in key metrics of organization-wide performance and has received positive reviews from medical students. The Innovations Exchange is expanding efforts to scale up and spread innovations by sponsoring three learning communities to improve care delivery. The aim of the Patient- and Family-Centered Care Learning Community is to help participating hospitals implement strategies from the Innovations Exchange to advance the practice of patient- and family-centered care within their own organizational culture and context. AHRQ in the Professional Literature Morris MS, Deierhoi RJ, Richman JS, et al. The relationship between timing of surgical complications and hospital readmission. JAMA Surg. 2014 Apr;149(4):348-54.Select to access the abstracton PubMed®. Wang F, Stone E, Skubic M, et al. Toward a passive low-cost in-home gait assessment system for older adults. IEEE J Biomed Health Inform. 2013 Mar;17(2):346-55. Select to access the abstract on PubMed®.  Meddings J, Rogers MA, Krein SL, et al. Reducing unnecessary urinary catheter use and other strategies to prevent catheter-associated urinary tract infection: an integrative review. BMJ Qual Saf. 2014 Apr; 23(4):277-89. Epub 2013 Sep 27. Select to access the abstract on PubMed®.  Raghavan R, Brown DS, Allaire BT, et al. Racial/ethnic differences in Medicaid expenditures on psychotropic medications among maltreated children. Child Abuse Negl. 2014 Jun;38(6):1002-10. Epub 2014 Mar 16. Select to access the abstract on PubMed®.  Dahlke AR, Chung JW, Holl JL, et al. Evaluation of initial participation in public reporting of American College of Surgeons NSQIP surgical outcomes on Medicare's Hospital Compare website. J Am Coll Surg. 2014 Mar; 218(3):374-80, 380.e1-e5. Epub 2013 Nov 27. Select to access the abstract on PubMed®. Jones E, Lebrun-Harris LA, Sripipatana A, et al. Access to mental health services among patients at health centers and factors associated with unmet needs. J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2014 Feb;25(1):425-36. Select to access the abstract on PubMed®. Maciejewski ML, Bayliss EA. Approaches to comparative effectiveness research in multimorbid populations. Med Care. 2014 Mar; 52 (Suppl 3):S23-30. Select to access theabstract on PubMed®.  Kahn MG, Bailey LC, Forrest CB, et al. Building a common pediatric research terminology for accelerating child health research. Pediatrics. 2014 Mar;133(3):516-25. Epub 2014 Feb 17. Select to access theabstract on PubMed®. Contact Information Please address comments and questions about the AHRQ Electronic Newsletter to Jeff Hardy at: (301) 427-1802 or Jeff.Hardy@ahrq.hhs.gov.