Cross-Cutting Strategies To Advance PCORTF Priorities

AHRQ tackles healthcare delivery challenges in myriad ways. Cross-cutting strategies are built on AHRQ’s core competencies and evidence-based methodologies and aligned with the PCORTF authorizations. The cross-cutting strategies will be used across all priority areas of the PCORTF strategic framework to guide investments and maximize impact. Each strategy is described briefly below. To find out more about each one, download the full PCORTF Strategic Framework (PDF, 935 KB).

Build National Capacity to Rapidly Disseminate and Implement PCOR Evidence Into Practice

AHRQ aims to build a national healthcare extension learning network that convenes relevant community stakeholders to increase State-level capacity across the U.S. to support healthcare delivery in safety net practices and align it with the needs of the community to reduce the time between generation of patient-centered evidence and changes in care delivery.

Apply an Equity Framework to All Projects

To create systems-level change, AHRQ recognizes the need to assess entrenched practices and policies, engage in internal and external systems changes, and acknowledge structural barriers that compromise equity. The Agency is also committed to fostering organizational level change (e.g., within health systems) to promote equity, including by offering culturally appropriate patient care, ensuring diverse representation in leadership and governance, establishing equitable and inclusive organizational policies, and engaging communities in collaborations to seek solutions to healthcare challenges.

Synthesize Evidence That Is Important to Patients and Key Stakeholders With Attention to AHRQ's Priority Populations

Strong evidence is the foundation of any dissemination and implementation initiative. AHRQ’s Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) Program provides systematic, rigorous, and unbiased synthesis of evidence from PCORI and other sources on a range of health topics, including clinical and healthcare delivery topics. AHRQ uses the PCORTF to support EPC systematic reviews of the evidence to support the goals, priorities, and strategies of the strategic framework. Evidence gaps identified in the reviews are shared with research funders, such as AHRQ, PCORI, and NIH to encourage additional evidence generation. AHRQ commits to careful attention to patient-centered outcomes and health equity in designing key questions and analyses.

Disseminate Evidence to Key Stakeholders in Accessible and Actionable Formats

AHRQ values returning data to key stakeholders—including patients, communities, patient advocacy organizations, providers, policy makers and others—in accessible and actionable formats. AHRQ aims to identify and work with partners best positioned to disseminate findings to particular audiences, identify the appropriate channels through which to disseminate information, and tailor the content of material to intended audiences so that it can be easily understood and applied.

Support Implementation of Evidence Into Practice at State and Local Levels

AHRQ continues to focus on bridging the gap between evidence-based research and implementation at the local and State level to improve health outcomes. AHRQ engages a broad range of partners and stakeholders and fosters collaborative and cooperative efforts between payers, health systems, policy makers, and members of target communities with diverse perspectives to better understand local needs and resources to implement evidence in effective and sustainable ways.

Leverage and Support Innovation in Digital Health, Clinical Decision Support, and New Models of Care

The Affordable Care Act requires AHRQ to promote the timely incorporation of research findings into clinical practices via clinical decision support (CDS) and engage with stakeholders about the value of the information disseminated. AHRQ’s CDS Connect platform, funded by the PCORTF, incorporates a CDS authoring tool and artifact repository to accelerate the incorporation of PCOR findings into health information technology that is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). These tools and technologies are shareable, standards-based, publicly available, and patient-centered. AHRQ’s PCORTF also supports the CDS Innovation Collaborative (CDSiC), a community composed of diverse stakeholders working to better understand how to make CDS more patient-centered and more valuable and meaningful. AHRQ also continues to support grants that scale clinical decision support tools, promote interoperability, and that must also incorporate patient input. AHRQ also recognizes and wants to support the explosion and evaluation of new models of care that include telehealth, e-referral to provide asynchronous collaborative care between providers, apps that collect patient biological data, patient-reported outcome measures, use of community and home-based services, e-caring to assist caregivers, and others.

Support Learning Health System Capacity To Collect, Analyze, and Harmonize and Share Actionable Data With Stakeholders To Improve Essential Health Outcomes

AHRQ defines a learning health system as a health system in which internal data and experience are systematically integrated with external evidence, and that puts knowledge into practice. The goal of learning health systems is to provide patients with higher quality, safer, more efficient care, and make their organizations better places to work. AHRQ conducts research and provides training, tools, and data to help healthcare delivery organizations of every size move towards becoming learning health systems. Several of these initiatives have been investments of the PCORTF. AHRQ will continue to leverage the PCORTF within its authorized activities to support ongoing and new learning health system initiatives.

Work With Federal, State, and Other Partners To Fund Evidence Creation, Communication, and Targeted Dissemination To Inform Health Policy

The PCORTF mission, vision, and goal are broad and bold. AHRQ recognizes the limits of the PCORTF authorized activities and funds to accomplish them. We cannot do it alone. AHRQ must extend the reach of PCORTF investments with strategic and synergistic partnerships across the healthcare landscape. A collaborative strategy has many advantages, including reducing duplicative work and leveraging the resources and expertise of other organizations that work in overlapping or adjacent areas. Collaborating with partners also increases the relevance and utility of the work, evidence, materials, and processes to a variety of stakeholders, including those who have the direct power to shape and reform policy.

Train and Support the Next Generation of Health Services Researchers With a Focus on Team Science, Understanding Community Needs, and Advancing Health Equity

Training and supporting the next generation of health services researchers is crucial to improving healthcare outcomes, advancing health equity, and understanding community needs, and are key authorized activities for the PCORTF. This cross-cutting strategy has special relevance to sustaining the patient-centered outcomes research done with this funding. AHRQ will continue innovating in its PCORTF training initiatives to develop the skills of trainees from diverse disciplines and settings to meet the current and future needs of evolving PCOR research.

Evaluate the Impact of PCORTF Investments on Care Delivery, Quality, Costs, Health Outcomes, and Health Inequities

Evaluating the broad and enduring population-level and clinical outcomes defined in the PCORTF strategic framework requires an approach that recognizes the complexity and timeline of organizational and systems change. For each funded project, program, or activity, as well as the overall PCORTF portfolio, the use of change models, logic models, and formative evaluations are necessary to document the extent that funded efforts are delivered as intended and have the desired effects.