New online information resources on health care spending, quality, and innovation available from AHR

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) announced in its latest electronic newsletter (issue #255) two new or updated online resources that have information related to health spending, health care quality, and health care innovations.

The first resource is the web-based Health Care Innovations Exchange. This resource, which is updated every two week, is a repository for successful health care innovations.  It also includes a lesson learned component, which entails descriptions of unsuccessful innovation attempts.  The purpose of this resource is to all "health professionals to learn, share, and adopt innovations in the delivery of health services."  AHRQ is holding a web conference to learn more about this resource, entitled Using AHRQ’s Health Care Innovations Exchange to Take on the Challenges of Care Delivery.  The web conference will be on May 12 at 2pm, E.D.T. 

The second resource is the 2006 update to the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP).  HCUP is a federal-state-industry partnership that brings together the data collection efforts of State data organizations, hospital associations, private data organizations, and the Federal government to create a national information resource of encounter-level health care data.  The most recent database release includes the State Inpatient Databases (SID), State Amublatory Surgery Databases (SASD), and State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD) of selected States, including Ohio.