$216 million marked for quality initiative

Twenty-six organizations will receive a total of $216 million to identify and share strategies to reduce healthcare-acquired conditions, such as infections. The funding is part of HHS' Partnership for Patients, a $1 billion quality-improvement and cost-control initiative launched in April.

The organizations—which include professional associations, healthcare systems and regional groups—will be designated as hospital engagement networks and will be charged with identifying effective, evidence-based solutions and disseminating them to other providers, HHS said in a news release.

The CMS Innovation Center will dole out funds to hospital engagement networks, eventually totaling $500 million for HAC prevention.

“Hospital engagement networks will work to develop learning collaboratives for hospitals and provide a wide array of initiatives and activities to improve patient safety,” HHS said in the release. “They will be required to conduct intensive training programs to teach and support hospitals in making patient care safer, provide technical assistance to hospitals so that hospitals can achieve quality measurement goals, and establish and implement a system to track and monitor hospital progress in meeting quality improvement goals.”

The selected organizations include the American Hospital Association, San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, and Joint Commission Resources.