AHRQ Evidence-based Practice Center Program--Applying the Knowledge to Practice to Data Cycle to Strengthen the Value of Patient Care
For more than 20 years, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) Program has been identifying and synthesizing evidence to inform evidence-based healthcare. Recognizing that many healthcare settings continue to face challenges in disseminating and implementing evidence into practice, AHRQ’s EPC program has also embarked on initiatives to facilitate the translation of evidence into practice and to measure and monitor how practice changes impact health outcomes. The program has structured its efforts around the three phases of the Learning Healthcare System cycle: knowledge, practice, and data. Here, we use a topic relevant to the field of hospital medicine—Clostridium difficile colitis prevention and treatment—as an exemplar of how the EPC program has used this framework to move evidence into practice and develop systems to facilitate continuous learning in healthcare systems.
©2019 Society of Hospital Medicine
Systematic reviews use carefully formulated questions to summarize the literature results using specific and established methods.14 Given that individual studies can have disparate results, it is critical to summarize and synthesize findings across studies, so we know what the overall evidence suggests, and whether we can be confident in the findings. To date, the EPC program has developed more than 500 evidence synthesis reports. An example relevant to the field of hospital medicine is the 2016 review that examined the effects of interventions to prevent and treat Clostridium difficile colitis in adults.15
The review examined the best available evidence, including data from randomized controlled trials and observational studies, on diagnosing, preventing, and treating Clostridium difficile colitis. Major findings included the following: vancomycin is more effective than metronidazole for treating the first occurrence of Clostridium difficile colitis (high-strength evidence), fecal transplantation may have a significant benefit in the treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile colitis (low-strength evidence), and institutional preventive interventions such as antibiotic stewardship practices, transmission interruption through terminal room cleaning, and handwashing campaigns reduce the incidence of Clostridium difficile colitis (low-strength evidence). The report results provided the most recent review of the evidence and were particularly important as they suggested a need for significant practice changes in the treatment of Clostridium difficile colitis based on the new evidence available. Previous to this report, the 2010 guidelines from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) recommended metronidazole over vancomycin for the treatment of the first occurrence of Clostridium difficile colitis.16 Subsequently, the newly released 2018 IDSA guideline provides recommendations consistent with the findings in this AHRQ report.17
Practice: Applying Knowledge in the Process of Care Delivery
AHRQ recognizes there are many interim steps between having the results from a systematic review and changing practice and improving care. In 2017, the EPC program began piloting approaches to make it easier for healthcare systems and hospitals to use its reports to improve the delivery of patient care and clinical outcomes. A pilot project conducted by the ECRI Institute - Penn Medicine EPC evaluated the feasibility of using an existing clinical pathway development and dissemination framework18 to translate findings from the 2016 AHRQ EPC report on Clostridium difficile colitis into a pathway for Clostridium difficile colitis treatment in the acute care setting.
To develop a Clostridium difficile colitis treatment pathway, the ECRI-Penn EPC team recruited a representative stakeholder group from Penn Medicine to review the EPC report as well as existing society guidelines. The clinical pathway was subsequently developed and approved by the stakeholders and disseminated through the Penn Medicine cloud-based pathways repository beginning on April 16, 2018.19 Most recently, the pathway became available in the electronic health record (EHR; 2018 Epic Systems Corporation) to facilitate provider review during care. Specifically, hyperlinks to the pathway are embedded within the ordering screens for those antibiotics used to treat Clostridium difficile colitis (ie, oral and rectal vancomycin, fidaxomicin, and metronidazole). Upon clicking the link in the ordering screen, the pathway launches a floating internet explorer window. The pathway is now publicly available on the AHRQ’s Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Connect Project (https://cds.ahrq.gov/), which is a resource to share pathway artifacts for other healthcare systems to use.
