The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released a guide to help primary care providers use personal health records in preventive care efforts, Modern Healthcare reports.
The guide -- developed by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers -- is based on three studies that evaluated the use of PHRs in preventive care.
The 28-page guide focuses on interactive preventive health records, or IPHR, a specialty type of PHR that is designed to work as part of a physician practice's electronic health record system. The guide says that PHRs can improve the use of preventive health services by providing patients with:
- Evidence-based recommendations tailored to individual risk factors;
- Reminders when preventive services are due;
- Guidance for inconsistent recommendations; and
- Tools to aid in decision-making.
The guide offers general information about IPHRs, as well as advice for:
- Selecting a vendor;
- Implementing the technology;
- Training staff; and
- Maintaining effective use of the technology (McKinney, Modern Healthcare, 7/19).
AHRQ Seeks Successful IT Strategies
In related news, AHRQ on Friday published in the Federal Register a request for information on successful strategies and challenges related to using IT to measure the quality of care, Health Data Management reports.
The RFI includes 15 questions such as:
- Whose voices are not being heard at the intersection of health IT and quality measurement;
- What infrastructure is needed to develop quality measures that would be of interest to consumers;
- How can developers be motivated to create new electronic quality measures; and
- What types of quality measures could be supported by a combination of natural language processing and structured data?
Comments will be accepted for 30 days (Goedert, Health Data Management, 7/19).