The Agency for Healthcare Quality (AHRQ's) has valuable information and research on health services for the aging population. Their efforts include answering the overarching question "What are the most effective and efficient means of providing health care to older people so that the end result is a measurable improvement in the health of this group?" AHRQ has identified four key strategies that can help provide the requisite knowledge to improve the health and functioning of older Americans:
1. Finding new models of care—acute, preventive, chronic, rehabilitative, and long-term—for improving the organization, delivery, and primary care practice of health care for older persons.
2. Aligning financial incentives and benefit decisions with desired clinical care and outcomes.
3. Improving access to care and reducing health disparities related to income, education, race, ethnicity, and gender.
4. Creating and translating new knowledge into practice, as well as improving the uptake of what is already known about high quality care for older persons, remain key issues facing the health services research community and primary care providers.
In addition, AHQR reports that their goal is to successfully develope and implement an aging-related research agenda depends as well on continued development of data that can be used to measure outcomes of care, use, and cost and on adequate training of the next generation of health services researchers to further advance research in this field.
For more information on this initiative visit www.ahrq.gov