AHRQ's Quality & Patient Safety Programs by Setting: Ambulatory Care

Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) Survey on Patient Safety Culture is a staff-administered survey that helps ambulatory surgery centers assess how their staff perceive various aspects of safety culture.

CAHPS^® Clinician & Group Survey was developed by AHRQ and designed to measure patients’ experiences of their care, including communication with doctors and nurses, responsiveness of staff, and other indicators of safe, high-quality care. The surveys are developed from the patient’s perspective on what’s important to measure.

Community-Acquired Pneumonia Clinical Decision Support Implementation Toolkit is a resource to help clinicians and clinical informaticians in primary care and other ambulatory settings implement and adopt the community-acquired pneumonia clinical decision support alert for the management of community-acquired pneumonia.

Guide to Improving Patient Safety in Primary Care Settings by Engaging Patients and Families offers four interventions and four case studies designed to improve patient safety by meaningfully engaging patients and families in their care.

Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd Edition can help primary care practices reduce the complexity of healthcare, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all literacy levels. It includes tools to improve spoken and written communication, tools to improve self-management and empowerment, and others.

Improving Your Laboratory Testing Process: A Step-by-Step Guide for Rapid-Cycle Patient Safety and Quality Improvement can increase the reliability of the testing process in your office by helping you examine how tests are managed.

Medical Office Survey of Patient Safety Culture is a staff-administered survey that helps medical offices assess how their staff perceive various aspects of safety culture.

Primary Care-Based Efforts To Reduce Potentially Preventable Readmissions addresses the role of primary care in improving the quality and safety of care as patients transition from the hospital setting.

Question Builder helps patients and caregivers prepare for medical appointments and maximize visit time by creating a list of questions to take with them.

Reducing Diagnostic Errors in Primary Care Pediatrics Toolkit aims to assist primary care practice teams with a systematic approach to reduce diagnostic errors among children in three important areas:

• Elevated blood pressure, which is misdiagnosed in 74 to 87 percent of children.
• Adolescent depression, which affects nearly 10 percent of teenagers, and is misdiagnosed in almost 75 percent of adolescents.
• Actionable pediatric diagnostic tests, which are potentially delayed up to 26 percent of the time.

Safety Program for End-Stage Renal Disease Facilities Toolkit helps end-stage renal disease clinics prevent healthcare-associated infections in dialysis patients by following clinical practices, creating a culture of safety, using checklists and other audit tools, and engaging with patients and their families. The toolkit includes four instructional modules that a facilitator can use to teach dialysis center team members specific ways to create a culture of safety.

Six Building Blocks and Six Building Blocks: A Team-Based Approach to Improving Opioid Management in Primary Care How-To-Implement Toolkit help support primary care clinics as they independently implement effective, guideline-driven care for their patients with chronic pain who are using opioid therapy.

TeamSTEPPS^® for Office-Based Care is a core curriculum initially developed for use in hospitals and adapted to other settings. It is a customizable "train the trainer" program plus specialized tools to reduce risks to patient safety by training clinicians in teamwork and communication skills.

Toolkit for Engaging Patients To Improve Diagnostic Safety is designed to help patients, families, and health professionals work together as partners to improve diagnostic safety.

Toolkit to Engage High-Risk Patients in Safe Transitions Across Ambulatory Settings is designed to help staff actively engage patients and their care partners to prevent errors during transitions of care.