Asthma Care Quality Improvement Workbook and Resource Guide

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The Asthma Care Quality Improvement Workbook and Resource Guide help State leaders assess the quality of their State's asthma care and create quality improvement strategies.

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What Do These Tools Do?

These tools help State leaders assess, design, and improve their asthma care initiatives.

What Can These Tools Tell States About Their Performance?

The Asthma Care Quality Improvement Workbook and the Resource Guide can be used to:

• Assess the quality of asthma care in the States.
• Pinpoint statewide asthma care quality weaknesses to better target improvement initiatives.
• Design strategies customized to specific needs, including creating new asthma quality improvement programs and building on existing programs.
• Track progress on existing asthma care quality improvement initiatives.

Who Should Use These Tools?

Using these tools requires collaboration among:

• State health department officials and executive branch officials, including State health departments, Medicaid officials, benefit managers for State employees, and staff specialists.
• Senior leaders, including State governors and legislators.
• Nongovernmental State and local health care leaders (professional societies, provider associations, hospital associations, quality improvement organizations, voluntary health organizations, health plans, business coalitions, community organizations, and consumer groups).

How Do These Tools Work?

The tools are written exercises designed to be completed by a team and are organized around five modules:

1. Making the case for asthma care quality improvement (senior leaders).
2. Designing a framework for statewide quality improvement (senior leaders).
3. Learning from current State quality improvement efforts (senior leaders).
4. Measuring the quality of asthma care (staff specialists).
5. Assessing the implications for State action (senior leaders).

What Data Sources Are Used?

The data contained within the Asthma Care Quality Improvement Workbook and the Resource Guide were taken from the "2004 National Healthcare Quality Report." Users can easily update these data by using the State Snapshots, available at: http://statesnapshots.ahrq.gov/snaps10/, which are based on the NHQR and also include a conservative estimate of excess costs associated with poor asthma care.

How Can I Obtain These Tools?

These free tools are available online at: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/asthmaqual.htm.

Current as of January 2012

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Internet Citation:

Asthma Care Quality Improvement Workbook and Resource Guide. January 2012. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/kt/asthma/asthmasumm.htm

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