Case Study: AHRQ Patient Safety Network
AHRQ/UCSF
http://www.psnet.ahrq.gov
Background
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is the lead Federal agency charged with improving the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans. As one of 12 agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ supports health services research that will improve the quality of health care and promote evidence-based decision making.
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Division of Hospital Medicine is a national leader in clinical care, education, and research. Hospitalists care for inpatients on the general medicine service at UCSF Medical Center, as well as on the general medical consult service and the palliative care service. In addition to their clinical work, the Division of Hospital Medicine focuses on excellence in teaching, research, and systems improvement.
UCSF selected Silverchair for the AHRQ PSNet team during the contract's proposal phase to provide strategic guidance for product development and technology design. UCSF felt that Silverchair's combined expertise with developing dynamic web portals, online content authoring and management systems, and health information taxonomies would make the PSNet proposal even more competitive. In 2004, AHRQ awarded a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to UCSF and Silverchair to develop the AHRQ Patient Safety Network, a national online resource featuring the latest news and essential resources on patient safety.
Project
Silverchair was contracted to design, develop, and operate AHRQ's PSNet and Web M&M (Morbidity & Mortality Rounds on the Web) websites—allowing UCSF's expert team to focus on the site's editorial and promotional operations.
Silverchair participated in all aspects of the initiative, including product conceptualization, design of the site's navigation and identity, data architecture and management, technical development, and project management. In addition, Silverchair worked with thought leaders at UCSF to develop an original Patient Safety taxonomy, establishing a new standard in how patient safety topics are classified and located.
AHRQ's PSNet is deployed on Silverchair's Content Manager Platform (SCM), and its contributing editorial teams use a tailored version of Silverchair's Orbital platform to develop, lay out, and publish the site's weekly content.
Result
PSNet was successfully launched in April 2005 and has been in operation since. During this time, PSNet has established itself as a leading Patient Safety resource and a flagship component of AHRQ's stated mission of "Improving the quality and safety of health care."
Notable
Based on the success of PSNet and Silverchair's SCM and Orbital platforms, AHRQ selected Silverchair to be the technology provider for AHRQ's Health Innovations Exchange and QualityTools.
Next: PsychiatryOnline