HHS puts medical errors in crosshairs

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will invest as much as $1 billion in a national collaboration that aims to save 60,000 lives during the next three years by eliminating preventable injuries and complications in patient care, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced at a press conference yesterday.

Funding for the program, called Partnership for Patients, will be invested in reforms that help achieve two shared goals during the next three years:

• Keep hospital patients from getting injured or sicker. The goal is to decrease preventable hospital-acquired conditions by 40 percent by 2013, compared to 2010. Achieving this goal would mean approximately 1.8 million fewer injuries to patients, with more than 60,000 lives saved over the next three years, Sebelius said.
• Help patients heal without complication. By the end of 2013, preventable complications during a transition from one care setting to another would be decreased so that all hospital readmissions would be reduced by 20 percent compared to 2010. Achieving this goal would mean more than 1.6 million patients would recover from illness without suffering a preventable complication requiring re-hospitalization within 30 days of discharge, according to HHS.

Every year, 98,000 people die from medical errors, noted Sorrel King, founder of the Josie King Foundation, which is participating in the partnership. Other participants include hospitals, health plans, physicians, nurses and patient advocates.

The partnership will target all forms of harm to patients but will start by asking hospitals to focus on nine types of medical errors and complications where the potential for dramatic reductions in harm rates has been demonstrated by pioneering hospitals and systems across the country. These nine include preventing adverse drug reactions, pressure ulcers, childbirth complications and surgical site infections, among others.

Five hundred hospitals as well as physician organizations, nurses groups and consumer groups have pledged their commitment to the Partnership for Patients, which could save as much as $35 billion in healthcare costs over the next three years, according to Sebelius. In the next 10 years, the Partnership for Patients could reduce costs to Medicare by about $50 billion and result in billions more in Medicaid savings, she projected.

Under the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA), $500 million of that funding was made available today through the Community-based Care Transitions Program, in which community-based organizations partner with eligible hospitals to help patients safely transition between care settings, Sebelius said. Up to $500 million more will be dedicated from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center to support new demonstrations related to reducing hospital-acquired conditions, she added.

Yesterday's announcement follows the debut last month of HHS' National Quality Strategy, a tool to help coordinate quality initiatives between public and private partners as well as to leverage and coordinate efforts by federal agencies and departments to improve patient care.

Click here for more information about the Partnership for Patients.