AHRQ, Ad Council Launch Patient Education Campaign

A top federal health care agency has joined forces with a leading private, nonprofit advertising organization to encourage patients to take a more proactive role in their health care.

HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ, has partnered with the Ad Council to launch "Questions Are the Answer: Get More Involved With Your Health Care." The campaign is built on television, radio and print public service announcements, or PSAs, directing viewers to visit a Web site hosted by AHRQ or to call a toll-free number, (800) 931-AHRQ [2477], to learn more about taking an active role in their health care.

The Web site features the top 10 questions a patient should ask his or her physician -- such as, "What is this test for?" -- and allows users to build a list of questions they can give to their health care professionals. Also included in the campaign are additional tips and fact sheets on reducing medical errors, including "Five Steps to Safer Health Care" and "20 Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors," that have been developed by AHRQ in conjunction with other health and consumer groups. Many of those additional materials are available in Spanish.

The groups launched the campaign during Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 4-10, in recognition of the initiative's aim of reducing the number of medical errors in the United States via a more proactive patient base. According to the Institute of Medicine, an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 inpatient deaths result from medical mistakes each year.

"The goal of this new campaign is to get patients more involved and to ultimately improve the safety of health care for all Americans," said HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt in a press release on the campaign. "We want people to feel comfortable having a dialogue with their health care clinicians."

The campaign's PSAs are being distributed to 28,000 media stations and will run in ad time and space donated by the media. A related campaign targeting Hispanic patients will launch later in 2007.