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.
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Data: Assessing Performance and Creating a Feedback Cycle for Learning and Improvement
The last step in the LHS cycle is to identify the impact of interventions on practice change and clinical outcomes, to understand how local results compare to peer institutions, and to inform future research and knowledge.
For the ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine EPC pilot project, both qualitative and quantitative outcomes were assessed. The initial qualitative analysis focused on the feasibility of using the AHRQ report in an existing pathway development and dissemination framework.18 It was found that clinical stakeholders identified the EPC report as trustworthy and more current than the society guidelines available at the time of development, particularly regarding the finding that vancomycin was more effective than metronidazole for the first occurrence of Clostridium difficile colitis. Additional qualitative analysis will be conducted to understand provider satisfaction with the pathway and practice impact. The quantitative analysis focused on pathway use (clicks over time) and found that as of September 16, 2018, the pathway had been viewed by providers 403 times. Future analysis will evaluate the impact of the pathway on the use of oral vancomycin for the first occurrences of Clostridium difficile colitis.
Patient registries can also help clinicians and healthcare systems to complete the feedback cycle and evaluate outcomes. Patient registries collect data from clinical and other sources in a standardized way in order to evaluate specific outcomes for various populations.20 AHRQ has created a registry handbook, including best practices for how to create, operate, and evaluate registries.20 This handbook enables the development of high-quality registries with data that can be leveraged for both research and improvement.
In the example of the ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine EPC pilot project, one way that a learning healthcare system, such as Penn Medicine, might measure the impact of the clinical pathway is to develop a quality improvement registry, which might be developed with information from their electronic health record, to examine the impact on the use of vancomycin for first occurrences of Clostridium difficile colitis. This information could help drive improvement in the implementation of the clinical pathway.
Registries can also be used as a source for research data. The NIH-funded American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Fecal Microbiota Transplantation National Registry is an example of a research registry that collects data on outcomes and adverse events associated with fecal transplants to fill gaps in existing research. The 2016 AHRQ EPC review found low-strength evidence on fecal transplant for treatment of recurrent Clostridium difficile colitis. When designing the protocol for this registry, the researchers used the AHRQ handbook to inform the design. Given that this is a research registry, it can be used by researchers to examine trends and outcomes of fecal transplant to treat Clostridium difficile colitis. Publications that use the registry as its source of data may be used in future systematic reviews, thus completing the cycle of learning.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The EPC program recognizes that gaps remain in the evidence to practice translation process and that more support is needed. Some upcoming activities of the AHRQ EPC Program to address these gaps and make its evidence reports more actionable for healthcare systems include:
