April 12, 2011
Yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, flanked by leaders of major hospitals, private companies, and medical associations, unveiled Partnership for Patients an initiative that aims to improve healthcare quality by integration of patient care, widescale implementation of evidence-based best practices for reducing medical errors and adverse events, and utilization of health information technology. Concretely, the initiative has two initial aspirations: reducing the number of preventable hospital-acquired conditions by 40% and cutting hospital readmission rates by 20% by 2013. At a press conference streamed live from the National Press Club, Secretary Sebelius remarked that HHS will devote as much as $1 billion from the Affordable Care Act to achieve these two goals.
The press conference began with a few empowering remarks by Sorrel King, whose daughter Josie died in 2001 due to a medical error. Through the Josie King Foundation, Sorrel has become an outspoken advocate for patient safety in an effort to shed light on preventable medical errors in the US. Thanks to people like Sorrel King, who give voice to the estimated 98,000 people affected annually by hospital-acquired conditions, the public has begun to see a shift toward increased patient safety.
Much of the conference focused on the idea that improving healthcare quality will not only save lives, but save money as well. Recently, safety pioneers such as Ascension and Denver Health have demonstrated how this works in practice, implementing best practices and cultivating a teamwork safety culture, reducing adverse medical events like bedsores, antibiotic resistant infections, and deep vein thrombosis. Hospital administrators have increasingly warmed to manufacturing principles like Lean and the Toyota Production System (TPS), realizing that cost-saving measures like these, if implemented effectively, can reduce error and waste that saves lives and money. Partnerships for Patients will aim to spread these successful models to other hospitals and, in doing so, make quality care accessible to everybody.
If the Partnership for Patients initiative performs as we hope it will by building bridges between hospitals, private companies, consumer advocates, practitioners, and patients it could reduce Medicare costs by $50 billion in only ten years. That translates into a $10 return on every $1 invested.
Private industry was also on hand to voice support for the initiative. Honeywell, a diversified technology and manufacturing company, has begun to take steps toward providing better healthcare to their employees and has committed to assisting the Partnership. David Code, CEO of Honeywell, says quality costs less, not more, which is why they have proposed to reimburse their employees for healthcare costs based on the quality metrics of hospitals in which they seek care. In other words, if an employee visits a hospital that is highly ranked on the quality scale, Honeywell will cover a larger portion of the bill than if the employee were to visit a hospital with a lower quality rating..
According to Medicare chief Don Berwick, these changes will not come easily. We will not see these reductions in medical errors by only instituting mandatory clinical checklists or installing more hand-washing stations. As Medicare reimbursement begins to shift from paying for quality, rather than quantity, of care, an across-the-board improvement will only occur by incentivizing change, learning collectively, recognizing successful programs, and adapting these successes to fit a community s local healthcare system.
Image credit: Flickr: Passive Income Dream.com
