The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) quietly launched a new site Monday that could have a big effect on how best practices are disseminated. Health Care Innovations Exchange is a biweekly online newsletter that supports clinicians and administrators who share (and adopt) innovations that improve patient care. As we all know, there's a lot of good research out there but it often takes years to get widely adopted.

The first issue highlights six innovations. One is "the Wellspring Model," where nursing homes come together on a quarterly basis, exchange clinical data, set benchmarks, and conduct training together.

The result? "Participating nursing homes reduced deficiency rates significantly" (a deficiency is something that inhibits the delivery of safe and effective care) "and improved staff retention to levels above those of peer institutions." Considering that nurse turnover is bad, but even worse in nursing homes (sometimes 100% according to the site!), this is big news.

Additionally, The Commonwealth Fund has published on the Wellspring Model here. The Fund does excellent, excellent work, but this AHRQ site is vital because it's a way to gather ALL the organizations that publish excellent research in one place. (Commonwealth has also funded two New America case studies that will come out this spring.)

As we've noted numerous times, comparative effectiveness information is vital if we want to improve the value of care patients receive.

You can find the new Web site (and sign up for its e-mails in the upper right-hand corner) at www.innovations.ahrq.gov. (The RSS feed doesn't seem to be up yet, according to my empty search in GoogleReader.)

Hat tip: AHA NewsNow.