RI Firm Awarded Research Grant Aimed at Making Health Care Choice Easier for ConsumerHealthcentric Advisors selected to evaluate the impact of public reporting of home health care outcomes Providence, RI (January 3, 2013) Healthcentric Advisors has been awarded a three-year $835,000 research and evaluation grant from the Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). AHRQ is the lead federal agency charged with improving the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of the nation’s health care primarily through the funding of health services research that will improve healthcare quality and promote evidence-based decision-making. The research study, Evaluating the Impact of Patient-Centric Home Health Quality Reports, takes advantage of Healthcentric Advisors extensive experience in measuring healthcare outcomes and public reporting. Although information about health care quality is increasingly available on public and private websites, little is known about what consumers look for when choosing providers and how the format of the information provided affects their choices and outcomes. This study will ask consumers what they would find helpful when choosing home health agencies, and incorporate their preferences into a new report format. Researchers at Healthcentric Advisors will examine the impact of the new report on patients’ home health agency choices and the quality outcomes they experience. Healthcentric Advisors is partnering with Lifespan and Brown University to conduct this work.
“This grant attests to Healthcentric Advisors’ growing national reputation for applied healthcare research,” says H. John Keimig, President and CEO at Healthcentric Advisors. “We have more than 15 years of experience measuring health care outcomes and assisting providers in improving health care quality, locally and nationally.”
“In Rhode Island, we’ve published information about home health agencies and other care providers since 1999,” says Rosa Baier, MPH, Senior Scientist at Healthcentric Advisors and principal investigator of the AHRQ study. “We believe public reporting improves health care quality by changing provider and purchaser behavior. This study will help us demonstrate that consumer-centric public health care reports can improve patients’ choices of providers and ultimately the quality of the care they receive.”
About Healthcentric Advisors
Based in Providence Rhode Island, Healthcentric Advisors is a nationally recognized nonprofit health care quality improvement and patient safety advisory organization providing its clients with effective education, consulting, research, analytical, and project management services. Healthcentric Advisors is recognized as one of the nation’s leading subject matter experts on health care transitions and the reduction of avoidable hospital readmissions. It has served as the federal Medicare quality improvement organization for the state of Rhode Island since 1995 and the Rhode Island Department of Health’s public reporting contractor since 1999. Learn more at www.HealthcentricAdvisors.org.
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