The Indian Health Service has a new partner as it tries to fix alarming deficiencies at its hospitals, which have come under federal scrutiny in the past year. The CMS said Tuesday it had awarded a contract for quality improvement at IHS hospitals to HealthInsight, a not-for-profit, community-based organization, to "support, build and redesign if needed" the infrastructure of hospitals run by the IHS.
“IHS hospitals—and our staff members across the country—are focused on continuous improvement. (HealthInsight) will provide training for our staff and access to experts to strengthen IHS capacity to deliver quality health care for American Indian and Alaska Native patients,” Mary L. Smith, IHS' principal deputy director, said in a statement.
HealthInsight, which focuses on improving health and healthcare, operates in Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah. It serves as the CMS' quality innovation network-quality improvement organization for those states under a five-year contract that began July 2014 .
"HealthInsight works with providers and the community on multiple, data-driven quality initiatives to improve patient safety, reduce harm, engage patients and families, and improve clinical care locally and across our region," the organization's website explains. That work involves "transforming physician practices, employing lean methodology, assisting with value-based purchasing programs and developing innovative approaches to quality improvement."
HealthInsight's contract to partner with the IHS, which the CMS said would last approximately three years, included several goals focused on quality improvement, including promoting and spreading best practices, and meeting or exceeding clinical, operational and safety standards.
Although the contract targets beneficiaries of Medicare, the government health insurance program that covers the elderly and the permanently disabled, the CMS said that the work involved would "result in systemic change that improves all of the care provided at these facilities."
Over the past year, federal inspectors have uncovered a slew of problems and deficiencies at Indian Health Service-run hospitals. In November, at the hospital on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, for instance, a patient having a heart attack did not receive immediate help.
In September, the IHS said it would temporarily close the emergency room of the Sioux San Hospital in Rapid City, S.D., in order to update the six-decade-old facility. The CMS had cited the hospital in May, saying it had deficiencies "so serious that they constitute an immediate and serious threat to the health and safety of any individual who comes to your hospital to receive services," Steven Chickering, the agency's associate regional administrator, wrote in a letter to the hospital. In 32 sample cases reviewed, nine did not receive the appropriate medical screenings at the emergency department.
Formalized efforts to improve quality at IHS facilities have laid out the goals of improving health outcomes and providing services that "all patients trust," according to the IHS' Quality Framework. Roughly 2.2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives get their healthcare through IHS-run systems.
