2 MONAHRQ Professional End Users Focus Group protocol

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ)

MONAHRQ (My Own Network, Powered by AHRQ)

FOCUS GROUP (Professional End Users)

Purpose of the Focus Group

The intent of the focus group is to collect, review and analyze data regarding the MONAHRQ software and its utility in high-quality, timely reporting of health services for professionals. The focus group is intended to collect data in order to support AHRQ in better understanding the strengths of MONAHRQ as well as its challenges, its position in the field of comparative quality, cost and resource use information, and how to strengthen MONAHRQ and make it more widely accessible.

Procedures

The evaluation team will conduct five focus groups with professional End Users. The interviews will take place over a two-week period. The focus groups will be conducted online. Each focus group will comprise from 6 to 8 participants and last approximately 1 to 1 ½ hours. Participants will be given $50.00 for their participation.

Script from LTG to potential interviewees:

Dear ________:

Our organization, LTG Associates, Inc., has been retained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, (AHRQ) to conduct an evaluation of the MONAHRQ software, designed to provide comparative health information. AHRQ’s mission is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used.

MONAHRQ^® is a desktop software tool that enables organizations - such as state and local data organizations, regional reporting collaboratives, hospitals and hospital systems, and health plans - to quickly and easily generate a health care reporting Website. MONAHRQ^® analyzes, summarizes, and presents information in a format ready for use by consumers, professionals and policy makers.

In order to gather the needs, expectations, and attitudes of professionals, we will be conducting focus groups with professional users of quality health information. Your participation in this focus group will be extremely helpful in our efforts to assess the value and utilization of MONAHRQ in reporting accurate, comparative health information.

We will be following up this message in a day or two with a telephone call to schedule your participation in an online focus group. Please take a moment to review your calendar and let us know what time and date would suit you. The focus group will likely take about 60 minutes, and your comments will be kept confidential.

For your participation in the focus group you will receive a stipend of a $50.00 electronic gift card.

The contact number we have on record for you is: _______________. If there is a better number that is best to reach you on, please provide that in a response to this message.

FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS

1. When did you start using websites reporting health information?

2. Is there a state mandate to report comparative health information?

   • If yes, how long has it been in place?

3. Why is it important to have access to accurate health information?

4. What kind of information are you looking for in a health reporting website?

   • Health outcomes

   • Costs

   • Other

5. Can you talk about the experience of using health reporting websites?

   • How easy or difficult is it to obtain the desired information?

   • If easy, what were the features that were most useful?

   • If difficult, what made it difficult and how could those difficulties be addressed?

6. Are you aware that AHRQ provides MONAHQ, free software to produce health reports, to any agency or organization that wants to provide health information?

   • If yes:

     1. Do you use a MONAHRQ generated website?

     2. How could it be improved?

   • If not:

     1. Would you consider using it?

     2. What features would you like to see?

7. Is there costumer service/technical assistance to help you utilize health websites reporting health information?

8. Are there health related topics that you would like to see reported in a website generating heath information? Which ones?