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����APPStats: Admissions from Emergency Departments During the COVID-19 Pandemic Across 29 States

The number of emergency department visits during April and December of 2020 across 29 states was 25.7 percent lower than the same months of the previous year, and the number that resulted in hospitalization decreased by 9.8 percent in that same time frame. (Source: ����APPHealthcare Cost and Utilization Project Statistical Brief #298, .)

Today's Headlines:

• ����APPViews Blog—2022 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report: We Still Have Much Work to Do.
• Grantee Identifies Strategies To Improve Medication Safety at Home.
• ����APPReleases Visualization on Healthcare Expenditures, Updates Data on Insurance at Private Employers.
• Highlights From ������’s Patient Safety Network.
• Grant Proposals Sought for Patient Safety Learning Labs.
• ����APPTo Host Virtual Meeting on Implementing Common Formats for Diagnostic Safety.
• ����APPin the Professional Literature.

����APPViews Blog—2022 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report: We Still Have Much Work to Do

������’s 2022 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report (NHQDR), which provides an annual portrait of healthcare in the United States, is the subject of a new blog post by agency Director Bob Valdez, Ph.D., M.H.S.A. This year’s NHQDR highlights important advances in healthcare, such as declines in mortality from HIV/AIDS and breast cancer. But it also identifies troubling trends, including a national decline in life expectancy—a trend most notable among racial and ethnic minorities—as well as shortages of healthcare workers and the high number of rural hospital closures. This year’s NHQDR also provides a deep dive into data on four special emphasis topics that are priorities for the Biden-Harris administration: maternal health, child and adolescent mental health, substance abuse disorders and oral health. Access the blog post. To receive all blog posts, and select “����APPViews Blog.”

Grantee Identifies Strategies To Improve Medication Safety at Home

AHRQ's latest grantee profile features Yan Xiao, Ph.D., a professor of nursing and engineering in the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research primarily focuses on identifying strategies to improve medication safety during care transitions using a human factors approach. Dr. Xiao has studied and identified ways to reduce preventable medication harms when patients move from inpatient to home care. He found that although numerous patient-reported outcome measures have been developed, they generally have not been developed with a patient-centered approach. Access Dr. Xiao’s profile and the profiles of other ����APPgrantees.

����APPReleases Visualization on Healthcare Expenditures, Updates Data on Insurance at Private Employers

������’s newest data visualization, which utilizes data from the , highlights trends in healthcare expenditures between 2014 and 2019 and allows users to explore data on commonly treated conditions among people with high healthcare expenses. Users can explore healthcare expenditures by age, race, payment source and type of service provided. Access additional visualizations on various healthcare topics, including the recently updated tool for exploring trends in health insurance at private employers, which now includes data through 2021.

Highlights From ������’s Patient Safety Network

������’s highlights journal articles, books and tools related to patient safety. Articles featured this week include:

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Review additional new publications in PSNet’s or access recent in ������’s WebM&M (Morbidity and Mortality Rounds on the Web).

Grant Proposals Sought for Patient Safety Learning Labs

����APPis accepting proposals from multidisciplinary research teams to establish Patient Safety Learning Labs that use a systems engineering approach to develop, implement and evaluate innovative solutions to patient safety challenges. Applicants may focus on current pressing patient safety issues related to diagnosis or treatment such as patient falls, medication safety, provider burnout and health disparities. ����APPencourages all eligible institutions, including minority-serving institutions, to apply. Proposals are due by Jan. 25, 2023. Access the for details and instruction on how to apply, as well as more information about ������’s Patient Safety Learning Labs.

����APPTo Host Virtual Meeting on Implementing Common Formats for Diagnostic Safety

����APPwill host a virtual software developers meeting Dec. 1 from 2 to 3 p.m. ET to discuss implementation of the Common Formats for Event Reporting—Diagnostic Safety (CFER-DS). The CFER-DS aims to help healthcare providers collect data for analysis of diagnostic safety events in a standardized manner across healthcare settings and specialties to learn how to improve diagnostic safety and better support clinicians in that process. Topics to be covered include newly available technical specifications to help providers and Patient Safety Organizations implement the CFER-DS in their organizations. by Nov. 30.

����APPin the Professional Literature

Training the next generation of learning health system scientists. Lozano PM, Lane-Fall M, Franklin PD, et al. Learn Health Syst 2022 Oct;6(4):e10342. Epub 2022 Sep 10. Access the on PubMed®.

Incompleteness of health-related quality of life assessments before left ventricular assist device implant: a novel quality metric. Yang G, Zhang M, Zhou S, et al. J Heart Lung Transplant 2022 Oct;41(10):1520-8. Epub 2022 Jul 8. Access the on PubMed®.

Intubation practice and outcomes among pediatric emergency departments: a report from National Emergency Airway Registry for Children (NEAR4KIDS). Capone CA, Emerson B, Sweberg T, et al. Acad Emerg Med 2022 Apr;29(4):406-14. Epub 2022 Jan 12. Access the on PubMed®.

Antibiotic stewardship strategies and their association with antibiotic overuse after hospital discharge: an analysis of the Reducing Overuse of Antibiotics at Discharge (ROAD) home framework. Vaughn VM, Ratz D, Greene MT, et al. Clin Infect Dis 2022 Sep 29;75(6):1063-72. Access the on PubMed®.

Interstate telehealth use by Medicare beneficiaries before and after COVID-19 licensure waivers, 2017-20. Andino JJ, Zhu Z, Surapaneni M, et al. Health Aff 2022 Jun;41(6):838-45. Access the on PubMed®.

"It made me feel like things are starting to change in society:" a qualitative study to foster positive patient experiences during phone-based social needs interventions. Steeves-Reece AL, Nicolaidis C, Richardson DM, et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2022 Oct 3;19(19). Access the on PubMed®.

Engaging same-day peer ambassadors to increase coronavirus disease 2019 vaccination among people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Los Angeles County: a hybrid feasibility-evaluation study. Shover CL, Rosen A, Mata J, et al. J Infect Dis 2022 Oct 7;226(suppl 3):S346-s52. Access the on PubMed®.

Association of injury after prescription opioid initiation with risk for opioid-related adverse events among older Medicare beneficiaries in the United States: a nested case-control study. Wei YJ, Chen C, Cheng TD, et al. PLoS Med 2022 Sep;19(9):e1004101. Epub 2022 Sep 22. Access the on PubMed®.