AHR Quality Indicators and Asthma Monitoring

AHR Quality Indicators and Asthma Monitoring

Introduction

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality develops AHR quality indicators. These are parameters used to establish potential quality issues in healthcare, identify gaps for further study and investigation and keep track of timely changes. The AHR quality indicators are developed on Evidence-Based approach and hence are deemed reliable in ensuring the quality of healthcare. Their functioning is designated in four categories; Preventive Quality Indicators that are focused on tracking changes and hence advise people on how to stay healthy, or help them in managing chronic diseases. The second category is the Inpatient Quality Indicators that evaluates the quality of care offered within health facilities. The fourth category is the Patient Safety Indicators which, through the use of discharge data, looks at the safety of the patient with regard to his/her contact with the hospital. Pediatric Quality Indicator which deals with measure development issues. This piece of writing is a procedural identification of resources for an evidence-based practice related to AHRQ indicators. The chosen Issue is monitoring asthma patients.

The Problem

Asthma patients who keep monitoring their status through written plans have registered fewer visits to asthma hospitalization or emergency facilities. Such patients need frequent attention from a physician who will evaluate their expiratory flow or any other monitored symptoms with respect to the patient’s asthma status. Since patients have improved on self-monitoring, physicians attention to the same is diminishing over time. As a result, asthma patients might be ending back to hospitalization facilities in large numbers.  The physician should be involved in the process to ensure systematic monitoring, medication, and any other intervention that may be required, hence improving the health of the patient.

With respect to the AHRQ indicators, this problem relates to the preventive indicators designation. To establish sources to help in better understanding the role of AHRQ indicators in asthma monitoring, the following PICOT question was asked. For asthma patients, is symptoms monitoring a factor in reducing hospitalization cases?. In this question, asthma patients the subject population, symptoms monitoring is the intervention while reduced hospitalization cases become the outcome. The purpose of the project, therefore, is to reduce hospitalization cases for asthma patients through the employment of AHRQ preventive indicators.

Levels of Evidence

Since AHRQI is an entirely different thing, the search had to begin with understanding what the AHR quality indicators are. AS such, the questions asked carried in the concept of AHRQ indicators and tried to link it to prevention, and more specifically, the case of asthma patients. This way, it was given that by answering such questions, a clear link between the two concepts would be established. Secondly, a search long such lines would definitely land the researcher on the most relevant articles across the sites used.

The search was able to bear fruits and provide some answers to our questions. The search identified Farquhar (2008) as one of the appropriate sources to start the discussion. The article is a holistic presentation of what AHRQ indicators are. However, it establishes a clear theoretical linkage between prevention and the health of patients with conditions such as asthma and other chronic diseases. As such, this article proved that AHR quality indicators could be enforced to make sure such patients live longer. The second piece of evidence was obtained from an article by Peter (2000), in which the author explored asthma monitoring as an Evidence-Based Practice. In his article, Peter indicates that both self-monitoring and monitoring by a physician helps reduce visits to the hospital. He adds that physicians should take it upon themselves to guide the patient even with the monitoring. His work does not pursue the link between asthma monitoring and AHR quality indicators. However, since monitoring is qualified as an evidence-based practice, AHR quality indicators can be employed to improve its efficiency.

Search Strategy

The following were the search terms used;

• AHRQ Indicators
• Patient Safety Indicators
• Prevention Quality Indicators
• Asthma Monitoring
• Asthma self-monitoring

The following were the databases used;

• The library
• Google Scholar
• PubMed
• ScienceDirect and

Refinements were guided by the search results received in every attempt. Some databases, such as NCBI offer very reliable suggestions that easily get you to the topic of interest. The first article, Farquhar (2008), appeared in both PubMed and NCBI. This was an indication that such an article would be useful. The fact that our keywords led to a similar article in different sources was a plus. Its content then proved the usefulness of the article. The second article, Peter (2000), came from ScienceDirect. Its title also had most everything the research looked for combined. No doubt it was going to be useful. The content eventually proved.

References

Farquhar M. AHRQ Quality Indicators. In: Hughes RG, editor. Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2008 Apr. Chapter 45. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2664/

Peter G. Gibson, Monitoring the patient with asthma: An evidence-based approach, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Volume 106, Issue 1, Part 1, 2000, Pages 17-26, ISSN 0091-6749, https://doi.org/10.1067/mai.2000.108307.