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Improving teamwork and communication is a continued focus in the hospital setting. This toolkit is designed to help organizations create a culture that embeds teamwork into daily practice routines. Topics covered include team leadership, learning and continuous improvement, clarifying roles, structured communication, and support for raising concerns.

This toolkit provides information for hospitals to help reduce preventable readmissions among Medicaid patients. Building on hospital experience with utilizing the materials since 2014, this updated guide explains how to determine root causes for readmissions, evaluate existing interventions, develop a set of improvement strategies, and optimize care transition processes.

Infants discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit to home are particularly vulnerable to care coordination errors. This four-component toolkit includes materials to help hospitals implement a coach program to educate providers and families about common communication and health concerns that arise during this transition.

This Web site provides resources to help health systems implement the Multi-Center Medication Reconciliation Quality Improvement Study (MARQUIS) medication reconciliation program. 

This toolkit provides resources to help augment testing processes in ambulatory care settings, including tools for identifying areas of concern and measuring improvements.

Studies have shown that a surprisingly large proportion of hospitalized patients are not aware of their diagnoses or treatment plan and that their preferences are often not taken into account in advanced care planning. This failure to provide patient-centered care indicates a need for increased patient engagement in safety and quality efforts. This toolkit published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is designed to help hospitals develop partnerships with patients around improving safety. Developed with input from clinicians and patients, the guide emphasizes four strategies—working with patients as advisors, improving bedside communication, integrating patients and families into shift changes, and using patient input to improve the discharge process. An AHRQ WebM&M perspective by Dr. Saul Weingart discusses the practical challenges of engaging patients in improvement efforts.

This Web site offers information about a standardized process for handoffs in emergency care designed to help reduce risks and improve reliability.

This toolkit provides information to help hospitals implement Project RED, including how to determine goals at the outset and measure project outcomes after implementation.

This tool describes factors that contribute to incomplete handoffs and recommends tactics improve handoff communication.

This toolkit, based on lessons learned from facilities that have implemented the Medications at Transitions and Clinical Handoffs (MATCH) initiative, provides strategies to implement and improve medication reconciliation in health care.

This Web site offers a toolkit to improve the safety of handoffs, patient transfers, and post-hospitalization medication use.

This Web site includes information on the Re-Engineered Discharge project (Project RED), which has developed strategies to enhance patient safety by improving the hospital discharge process to reduce readmissions.

This set of materials provides checklists, worksheets, and other aids to help implement a reliable critical test result communication program. A previous AHRQ WebM&M commentary addressed the issue of communication surrounding critical laboratory values. 

This article shares several examples of errors made while verbally communicating medication orders and includes recommendations for safe practices.