The CMS is planning a major patient-safety initiative that will involve making the known strategies for safer care more widely available, disclosed CMS Administrator Dr. Donald Berwick during his View from the Top address today on the final day of the 2011 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society exhibition and conference in Orlando, Fla.
“Let's make the best the norm,” Berwick said, citing a number of adverse patient events that have virtually disappeared at some of the nation's hospitals.
In a briefing after his address, Berwick declined to elaborate on the initiative or whether it would take the form of regulations or a grant program. But, in response to a question from
Modern Healthcare, he reiterated his description of the initiative as a “major effort.”
Berwick, of course, is well-known for his 100,000 Lives and Protecting 5 Million Lives from Harm campaigns when he headed the Institute for Healthcare Improvement before he became CMS administrator.
In his address, Berwick extolled the virtues of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and of healthcare information technology to create the ideal healthcare delivery system of the future. Both offer tools and mechanisms that will allow coordinated-care plans for every patient, encourage teams of caregivers to manage those plans and place the patient at the center of those plans with the patient in charge, according to Berwick.
One of the mechanisms will be accountable care organizations, he said. Berwick said the regulations defining what ACOs will be under Medicare are “imminent.” He said the regulations will be in the form of a “notice of proposed rulemaking,” with a 60-day public comment period.
“This will be our first stab at that definition,” he said.
At the briefing with reporters, Berwick defined “imminent” as “a few weeks.”
