The CMS Innovation Center is beefing up reporting requirements in a revived Partnership for Patients program whose initial three-year effort fell short of expectations in reducing hospital-acquired conditions that cause patient harm.
The agency on Friday awarded $110 million in contracts to 17 hospitals and health systems that operate Hospital Engagement Networks or HENs. The slimmed down program is down from 26 HENS and a $218 million contract amount.
Under the revamped initiative, the HENs have agreed to aggressive targets to reduce hospital-acquired conditions and readmissions.
“We have made significant progress in keeping patients safe and we are focused on accelerating improvement efforts through collaboration and reliable implementation of best practices,” said Dr. Patrick Conway, acting principal deputy administrator and chief medical officer, said in a statement. “This second round of Hospital Engagement Networks will allow us to continue to improve healthcare safety across the nation.”
One of the criticisms of the previous version of the Partnership for Patients program is that the CMS gave HENs and their member hospitals the flexibility to choose which process and outcome measures to report. That decision made comparisons between individual HENs across the country difficult.
These new contracts will require hospitals to track progress on quality and safety with identical measures of performance.
In the first phase of the program, the initiative recruited over 3,700 hospitals. Despite the reduced funding, the agency hopes that the program would maintain or increase the current level of participation.
While patient safety is improving, the gains from HENs and other efforts have fallen short of expectations set by HHS. The agency estimates that 50,000 fewer patients died, 1.3 million adverse events were avoided and $12 billion was saved at hospitals because of reductions in hospital-acquired conditions from 2010 to 2013.
The 17% decline in HACs fell short of the 40% goal set by HHS.
The new effort will last one year and target the same 10 categories of patient safety as the original initiative. They include adverse drug events, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated blood stream infections, injuries from falls and immobility, obstetrical adverse events, pressure ulcers, readmissions, surgical-site infections, venous thromboembolism and ventilator-associated pneumonia.
The new network operators include the American Hospital Association, Iowa Healthcare Collaborative, Washington State Hospital Association, Minnesota Hospital Association,Carolinas Healthcare System, Ohio Hospital Association, Healthcare Association of New York State, Ascension Health, LifePoint Hospitals Inc. and Dignity Health.
“Hospitals and health systems have made incredible strides in patient safety and are eager to accelerate their quality improvement efforts,” said Rick Pollack, CEO of the AHA. “Through the work of the original HEN, we know that, as a field, we saved thousands of lives, improved care across key areas of patient care and realized significant cost savings.”
HENs help hospitals by facilitating the sharing of harm-reducing, evidence-based practices through in-person meetings and conference calls. They also collect data and submit monthly performance reports to the CMS Innovation Center for evaluation purposes.
