Tag: Toolkit/Tools

Toolkit To Promote Safe Surgery

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

The Toolkit To Promote Safe Surgery helps perioperative and surgical units in hospitals identify opportunities to improve care and safety practices and implement evidence-based interventions to prevent surgical site infections. The toolkit has evidence-based, practical resources that reflect the real-world experiences of the frontline clinicians and subject matter experts who participated in the AHRQ Safety Program for Surgery, a national implementation project in which approximately 200 hospitals participated and successfully reduced surgical site infections. It builds on AHRQ’s Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) and the core CUSP toolkit by providing specific tools focused on the surgical setting to help hospitals reduce surgical site infections and other complications. This toolkit focuses on surgery in hospitals

Mapping Medicare Disparities

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of Minority Health (OMH)

Chronic diseases pose a significant problem in the United States resulting in substantial morbidity, mortality, disability, and cost. The CMS Office of Minority Health has designed an interactive map, the Mapping Medicare Disparities Tool, to identify areas of disparities between subgroups of Medicare beneficiaries (e.g., racial and ethnic groups) in health outcomes, utilization, and spending. It is an excellent starting point to understand and investigate geographic and racial and ethnic differences in health outcomes. This information may be used to inform policy decisions and to target populations and geographies for potential interventions.

Laboratory Assessment – Targeted Assessment for Prevention (TAP) Facility Assessment Tool; Clostridium difficile Infection (CDI)

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

The questions in this section are laboratory-specific and should be directed to the facility’s laboratory director or other staff that have knowledge of the
practices at the laboratory that performs the facility’s C. difficile testing.

Toolkit for Reducing Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

The Toolkit for Reducing Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI) can help your unit implement evidence-based practices to reduce and, in many cases, eliminate CLABSI. More than 1,000 intensive care units across the country reduced CLABSI rates by 41 percent when their clinical teams used the tools in this toolkit along with the Core CUSP Toolkit. The Core CUSP Toolkit provides training materials and resources to help clinical teams learn a method that can help them make care safer by combining improved teamwork, clinical best practices, and the science of safety.

Toolkit for Reducing CAUTI in Hospitals

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

The Toolkit for Reducing Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI) in Hospitals helps hospitals prevent CAUTI in patients and improve safety culture at the unit level by implementing concepts from the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP). Health care professionals can use it to make care safer by following clinical best practices and creating a culture of safety. The toolkit has evidence-based, practical resources that reflect the real-world experiences of the frontline providers and researchers who participated in a national implementation project to reduce CAUTIs. It builds on the core CUSP toolkit by providing specific tools focused on reducing CAUTI in hospitals.

Preventing Pressure Ulcers in Hospitals

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

This tool is an example of a clinical pathway, detailing the relationship among the different components of pressure ulcer prevention. This tool can be used by the hospital unit team in designing a new system, as a training tool for frontline staff, and as an ongoing clinical reference tool on the units. This tool can be modified or a new one created to meet the needs of your particular setting. If you prepared a process map describing your current practices, you can compare that to desired practices outlined on the clinical pathway.

Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

A variety of forces are pushing hospitals to improve their discharge processes to reduce readmissions. Researchers at the Boston University Medical Center (BUMC) developed and tested the Re-Engineered Discharge (RED). Research showed that the RED was effective at reducing readmissions and posthospital emergency department (ED) visits. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality contracted with BUMC to develop this toolkit to assist hospitals, particularly those that serve diverse populations, to replicate the RED.

Vaccine Storage and Handling Toolkit (Updated Addendum added April 12, 2022 )

Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

This toolkit addresses proper storage, handling, transport,
and emergency handling of COVID-19 vaccines.

The addendum has been updated to clarify COVID-19 vaccination provider requirements, include language related to FDA
authorization and approval of COVID-19 vaccine products, and storage and handling information on Pfzer-BioNTech Vaccine.