Toolkits

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) offers practical, research-based tools and other resources to help a variety of health care organizations, providers, and others make care safer in all health care settings.

AHRQ Safety Program for End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Facilities Toolkit
This toolkit helps dialysis center clinicians prevent healthcare-associated infections and make care safer by following clinical best practices, creating a culture of safety, using checklists and other audit tools, and engaging with patients and their families.

Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) Control and Prevention Toolkit
These tools are organized into six sections, and can be used either in its entirety, or by pulling out specific sections that meet an organization’s needs.

Care Model Toolkit
The toolkit includes a recommended process for implementing the Care Model and links to tools that you and your practices can use to support those changes. It also includes recommendations for strengthening the financial status of practices while implementing the Care Model.

Communication and Optimal Resolution (CANDOR) Toolkit
The Communication and Optimal Resolution (CANDOR) process can be used by health care institutions and practitioners to respond in a timely, thorough, and just way when unexpected events cause a patient harm.

Community Connections Obesity Referral Toolkit
This toolkit is intended to offer broad ideas based in actual practice experience with the understanding that every practice will need to customize concepts for their own specific needs. Ideally, clinicians and staff at every level of a practice should review the toolkit, as each member contributes to patient care.

Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program (CUSP) Toolkit
Created for clinicians by clinicians, this core toolkit includes customizable training tools that build the capacity to address safety issues by combining clinical best practices, the science of safety, and attention to safety culture.

Dissemination Planning Tool
This tool was developed to help researchers evaluate their research and develop appropriate dissemination plans if the research is determined to have "real world" impact.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) Information Design and Usability Toolkit
This project set out to design, develop, test, and disseminate a toolkit by which health care organizations—specifically primary care practices—can assess the usability of EHR systems.

Emergency Severity Index (ESI): A Triage Tool for Emergency Department Care, Version 4
The ESI is a five-level emergency department triage algorithm that helps hospital emergency department staff rapidly identify patients in need of immediate attention and better identify patients who could safely and more efficiently be seen in a fast-track or urgent care center rather than the main emergency department.

Enhancing the Clinical Content of Administrative Data—Present on Admission (POA) Toolkit
These materials define the POA indicator, explain POA coding and reporting requirements, and describe the benefits of enhancing administrative datasets with POA indicators.

Falls Management Program: A Quality Improvement Initiative for Nursing Facilities
This process is an interdisciplinary quality improvement initiative to assist nursing facilities in providing individualized, person-centered care and improving their fall care processes and outcomes through educational and quality improvement tools.

Guide to Patient and Family Engagement in Hospital Quality and Safety
This guide helps hospitals work as partners with patients and families to improve quality and safety.

Health Information Technology (Health IT) Evaluation Toolkit
This toolkit provides step-by-step guidance for project teams who are developing evaluation plans for their health information technology projects. Regardless of a patient's health literacy level, it is important that staff ensure that patients understand the information they have been given. This toolkit uses the teach-back method to help medical staff ensure that patients understand.

Improving Patient Flow and Reducing Emergency Department Crowding: A Guide for Hospitals
This guide presents step-by-step instructions for planning and implementing patient flow improvement strategies to alleviate crowded emergency departments.

Improving Medication Safety in High Risk Medicare Beneficiaries Toolkit
This toolkit was created as a resource to clinicians and researchers who are interested in replicating or adapting the medication therapy management (MTM) model that was studied in MEDIS-MB to other ambulatory practice sites or research settings.

Improving Your Office Testing Process. A Toolkit for Rapid-Cycle Patient Safety and Quality Improvement
This toolkit provides information and resources to help physicians' offices, clinics, and other ambulatory care facilities assess and improve the testing process in their offices.

Informed Consent and Authorization Toolkit for Minimal Risk Research
These materials facilitate the process of obtaining informed consent and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) authorization from potential research subjects.

Medications at Transitions and Clinical Handoffs (MATCH) Toolkit
MATCH features strategies from the field that can help hospitals improve medication reconciliation processes for patients as they move through the health care system.

National Quality Strategy Stakeholder Toolkit
This stakeholder toolkit can be used by private and public organizations to advance the mission of the National Quality Strategy (NQS). It contains a variety of approved materials for organizations to use and tailor to their specific needs.

Nursing Home Antimicrobial Stewardship Modules
These field-tested, evidence-based modules can help nursing homes develop antibiotic stewardship programs to help them use and prescribe antibiotics appropriately.

Pediatric Toolkit for Using the AHRQ Quality Indicators
This stand-alone pediatric version of the QI Toolkit is available to meet the needs of hospitals that serve children and includes a concise set of tools to facilitate efforts to improve clinical quality.

Preventing Falls in Hospitals—A Toolkit for Improving Quality of Care
This toolkit focuses on overcoming the challenges associated with developing, implementing, and sustaining a fall prevention program.

Preventing Pressure Ulcers in Hospitals
These materials assist hospital staff in implementing effective pressure ulcer prevention practices through an interdisciplinary approach to care.

Questions Are the Answer Toolkit
Questions Are the Answer provides tools for clinicians to use to engage patients and their families as part of the health care team. Materials include a seven-minute waiting room video, notepads for prioritizing questions, brochures, and an interactive question builder.

Race and Ethnicity Data Improvement Toolkit
This toolkit provides practical tools and guidance to those interested in improving the quality of their hospital patient race, ethnicity, and primary language (R/E/L) data collection efforts.

Re-Engineered Discharge (RED) Toolkit
RED is a research-based tool to assist hospitals, including those that serve diverse populations, in improving their hospital discharge process and reducing avoidable readmissions.

The SHARE Approach
These materials contain a five-step process for shared decisionmaking that includes exploring and comparing the benefits, harms, and risks of each option through meaningful dialogue about what matters most to the patient.

Team Strategies and Tools To Enhance Performance and Patient Safety 2.0 (TeamSTEPPS)
TeamSTEPPS is a customizable program plus specialized tools to reduce risks to patient safety by training clinicians in teamwork and communication skills. Materials include a leader’s guide for trainers, a pocket guide of important concepts for trainees, and a multimedia guide featuring training videos to illustrate various concepts. There are modules for (1) hospitals, (2) medical offices, (3) long-term care facilities, (4) dental offices, (5) rapid response teams, and (6) staff treating patients with limited English proficiency.

Toolkit for Hospitals: Improving Performance on the AHRQ Quality Indicators (QI)
This toolkit helps hospitals understand AHRQ’s Quality Indicators and how to use them to identify areas of concern in need of further investigation, and monitor progress over time.

Toolkit for Implementing the Chronic Care Model in an Academic Environment
These materials enable implementation of the Chronic Care Model in academic health care settings. The tools and lessons learned from four organizations that participated in the Academic Chronic Care Collaborative are provided here for readers to adapt and replicate in teaching medical residents and improving care for patients with chronic illnesses.

Toolkit for Reducing Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI)
Helps hospitals prevent CAUTI in patients and improve safety culture at the unit level by implementing concepts from the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP).

Toolkit for Reduction of Clostridium difficile Infections Through Antimicrobial Stewardship
Developed as part of the ERASE C. diff project, this toolkit assists hospital staff and leadership in developing an effective antimicrobial stewardship.

Tools for Reducing Central Line-Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI)
These tools will help hospital staff implement evidence-based practices and eliminate CLABSIs. When used with the core CUSP (Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program) toolkit, these tools reduced CLABSI rates by 41 percent in more than 1,000 hospitals across the country.

Tracking and Improving Screening for Colorectal Cancer (CRC) Intervention: A Systems Approach
This toolkit includes materials for planning the intervention, identifying a central entity to manage the program, educating medical practices about the program, and communicating with patients.

Transitioning Newborns From NICU to Home: A Resource Toolkit
Provides customizable resources to help hospitals and families safely transition newborns out of the neonatal intensive care unit to home using a health coach program.