New – AHRQ Releases Evaluation Guide to Help Improve Primary Care Delivery

New – AHRQ Releases Evaluation Guide to Help Improve Primary Care Delivery

AHRQ Releases: A Guide to Real-World Evaluations of Primary Care Interventions

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released a new Evaluation Guide for designing real-world evaluations of interventions such as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) and other models to improve primary care delivery. Effective primary care can improve health and cost outcomes, and patient, clinician and staff experience, and evaluations can help determine how best to improve primary care to achieve these goals. The Guide may be helpful to a variety of audiences including payers, delivery systems (including ACOs), practice –based research networks and employers thinking about whether and how to evaluate interventions.

This Guide offers options to address some of the challenges that evaluators of small-scale projects face, as well as insights for evaluators of larger projects. The Guide answers six questions:

• Do I need an evaluation?
• What do I need for an evaluation?
• How do I plan an evaluation?
• How do I conduct an evaluation and what questions will it answer?
• How can I use the findings?
• What resources are available to help me?

In addition to this Guide, AHRQ has developed a number of resources for evaluators of primary care interventions like the PCMH.

Learn more about how to improve primary care. Visit AHRQ’s Prevention & Chronic Care Program at: http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/prevention-chronic-care/index.html