As part of AHRQ's commitment to accelerating the spread of evidence-based practices across learning health systems, the Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) Program wants to help learning health systems use the evidence from its evidence reports to strengthen patient care. This webpage showcases projects by the EPC Program to help develop evidence reports that are more useful for health systems.

Learning Health Systems Panel

In 2018, the EPC Program started a project to enhance learning health systems' adoption of evidence to improve the quality and effectiveness of patient care. To do this, it convened a learning health systems panel to guide the development of relevant evidence reports as well as tools to help health systems use findings from EPC evidence reviews. In 2020-21, learning health systems represented in the panel implemented and evaluated these tools. Get more details about the Learning Health Systems Panel.

Evidence Reports for Learning Health Systems

The Learning Health Systems Panel nominated this list of reports. For all AHRQ EPC reports see Product Search page.

• Strategies for Patient, Family, and Caregiver Engagement
• Automated-Entry Patient-Generated Health Data for Chronic Conditions: The Evidence on Health Outcomes
• Integrating Palliative Care in Ambulatory Care of Noncancer Serious Chronic Illness: A Mixed-Methods Review
• Interventions To Decrease Hospital Length of Stay
• Management of High-Need, High-Cost Patients: A Realist and Systematic Review
• Prehabilitation and Rehabilitation for Major Joint Replacement Surgery
• Diagnostic Errors in the Emergency Department (in progress)
• Telehealth During COVID19 (in progress)

Tools Developed Under the Learning Health Systems Project

In collaboration with Learning Health Systems, two tools were developed to help health systems use findings from EPC evidence reviews: a summary of findings tool and a visual dashboard. The pilot focused on two AHRQ EPC reports: Antipsychotics for the Prevention and Treatment of Delirium and Treatment of Depression in Children. The tools are located at Learning Health System Pilot Project.

Methods Reports

The reports listed in this section aim to help advance the methods the EPCs use in conducting and disseminating systematic reviews that can be useful to health systems.

• 2017 Health System Exploratory Pilot Projects
  • Understanding Health-Systems' Use of and Need for Evidence To Inform Decisionmaking
  • A Framework for Conceptualizing Evidence Needs of Health Systems
• 2018 EPC and Health Systems Partnership Pilot Projects
  • Overview
  • Disseminating Findings From EPC Reports: Pilot Project of Three Products
  • Development and Usability Testing of EPC Evidence Review Dissemination Summaries for Health Systems Decisionmakers
  • Linking Evidence Reviews to Organizational Guideline Planning
  • Assessing the Impact of Indexing Performance Measure Codes on the Perceived Value of EPC Reports to Health-Systems
  • Improving Access to and Usability of Systematic Review Data for Health Systems Guidelines Development
  • Web Interactive Presentation of EPC Reports: A Foray Into Interactive Reports
  • Anxiety in Children—A Dual Approach To Facilitate Health Systems Uptake of Evidence Synthesis Reports
  • Development of a Primary Care Guide for Implementing Evidence-based Screening and Counseling for Unhealthy Alcohol Use With Epic-based Electronic Health Record Tools
  • Use of a Clinical Pathway to Facilitate the Translation and Utilization of AHRQ EPC Report Findings
• 2019 EPC and Health Systems Partnership Pilot Projects
  • Facilitating the Implementation of EPC Reports in Learning Health Systems Engaged in Quality Initiatives: an EPC Pilot Project on ADHD
  • Translation of a C. difficile Treatment Clinical Pathway Into Machine-Readable Clinical Decision Support Artifacts Prototyped for Electronic Health Record Integration
  • Integrating Health System Data With Systematic Reviews: A Framework for When and How Unpublished Health System Data Can Be Used With Systematic Reviews To Support Health System Decision Making
  • Developing Consistent and Useful Quality Improvement Study Data Extraction for Health Systems
• 2020 Health System-Related EPC Projects
  • Improving the Utility of Evidence Synthesis for Decision Makers in the Face of Insufficient Evidence
  • Roadmap for Narratively Describing Effects of Interventions in Systematic Reviews

Learning Health Systems-Related Publications

Reid E, Guise JM, Fiodalisi C, et al. NxGen evidence: redesigning the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Effective Health Care website to promote engagement, interactivity, and usability of systematic reviews. Research Synthesis Methods. 31 July 2020 [Epub before print].

Borsky AE, Flores EJ, Berliner E, et al. AHRQ Evidence-based Practice Center Program: applying the knowledge to practice to data cycle to strengthen the value of patient care. Journal of Hospital Medicine. 2019. DOI: 10.12788/jhm.3157

Guise JM, Savitz LA, Friedman CP. Mind the gap: putting evidence into practice in the era of learning health systems. J Gen Intern Med. 2018. DOI: 10.1007/s11606-018-4633-1

2019 Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety Series

This series highlighted the EPCs pilot translational products to improve the ability of health systems to access and understand information from the EPC evidence reviews.

• Fiordalisi C, Borsky A, Chang S, et al. AHRQ EPC series on improving translation of evidence into practice for the learning health system: introduction. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2019;45(8):558-65.
• Flores EJ, Jue JJ, Giradi G, et al. AHRQ EPC series on improving translation of evidence: use of a clinical pathway for C. difficile treatment to facilitate the translation of research findings into practice. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2019;45(12):822-8.
• Adam GP, Balk EM, Jap J, et al. AHRQ EPC series on improving translation of evidence: web-based interactive presentation of systematic review reports. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2019;45(9):629-38.
• White CM, Coleman CI, Jackman K, et al. AHRQ series on improving translation of evidence: linking evidence reports and performance measures to help learning health systems use new information for improvement. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2019;45(10):706-10.
• Barclay C, Viswanathan M, Ratner S, et al. Implementing evidence-based screening and counseling for unhealthy alcohol use with Epic-based electronic health record tools. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2019 Aug;45(8):566-74.
• Borsky AE, Savitz LA, Bindman AB, et al. AHRQ Series on improving translation of evidence: perceived value of translational products by the AHRQ EPC learning health systems panel. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2019;45(11):772-8.
• Guise JM, Reid E, Fiordalisi CV, et al. AHRQ series on improving translation of evidence: progress and promise in supporting learning health systems. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2020;46(1):51-2.