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News and Special Events
New Indiana ACTION Collaborative
It takes about seventeen years for lessons soundly learned in research to find their way into actual patient care. But now a national push to bring research findings into practice quickly is shrinking the traditional delay between publication of scientific evidence and implementation. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is fast tracking federal funding to a few recipients around the country chosen for their ability to define innovative care strategies, then bring them smoothly to scale.
The Indiana ACTION Collaborative is one of 15 sites selected for Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks (ACTION). The Center of Excellence in Implementing Evidence-Based Practice coordinates Indiana ACTION and serves as its headquarters.
Indiana ACTION interlinks six healthcare systems, all of which use an electronic health record, with the more than 30 years of clinical and laboratory data stored in the Regenstrief Medical Records System.
ACTION overhauls the usual mechanism for federal funding, paring a process that typically requires a year down to a mere nine weeks. AHRQ first puts forth a rolling series of topics targeted at improving care delivery, patient safety, expansion of health information technology, and healthcare costs. Then, ACTION Collaboratives around the country bid to carry out on-the-ground field research and implementation.
AHRQ welcomes ideas for important ACTION research topics from everyone. Make your suggestion by sending a short rationale to ACTION Program Officer Cynthia Palmer: cynthia.palmer@ahrq.hhs.gov.
"From our partnerships with researchers and healthcare delivery systems," says Center director Brad Doebbeling, "we can put teams together, respond right away and put in a bid to get projects started quickly."
A small committee reviews the bids, and makes awards within an astonishing 2 days to 3 weeks.
ACTION's potential for large scale impact is suggested by past succeseses of pilot AHRQ rapid cycles. One is a web-based tool originally made to handle communications between hospitals and home health teams when transferring cardiac patients to home. It is now implemented across New York State for cardiac and general medicine, HIV, and geriatric patients alike.
In all, the network of ACTION centers delivers health care to 100 million Americans. It links large health systems with top health services researchers to respond to problems people working in medicine encounter on a daily basis.
The result is applied, demand-driven research whose results reach the real world at unprecedented speed.
More Indiana ACTION partners:
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