(AHRQ: Rockville, Maryland) -- The Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently unveiled MONAHRQ—My Own Network Powered by AHRQ—a free, Microsoft Windows-based software application that significantly reduces the cost and time a state, hospital, or other organization would need to spend to compile, analyze, and post data on quality of hospital care, its cost, and how that care is used. MONAHRQ allows users to create a customized website with data that can be used for internal quality improvement or reporting quality information to the public.

The cost of creating a website with this data is estimated to be $300,000 or more, and the time required could be a year, according to states that tested MONAHRQ as it was being developed. With MONAHRQ, that time can be cut to a few days. Currently, many states require that quality data be reported publicly, and other states are considering doing so. For example, the Hawaii Health Information Corp., which tested MONAHRQ, plans to recommend that the state uses the AHRQ software application for that purpose.

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