Partnership for Patients

by Bay City News Service

Congressman George Miller joined other health officials at in Martinez on Friday to celebrate the hospital's commitment to reducing hospital-related illnesses and medication errors.

The commitment, known as the Partnership for Patients, is being launched as part of the federal Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law a year ago in March.

More than 1,300 hospitals nationwide have pledged their commitment to the Partnership for Patients initiative, which seeks to reduce preventable hospital-acquired conditions such as infections, falls and medication errors by 40 percent by the end of 2013.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will invest $1 billion in federal funding to launch the initiative, according to the department.

The initiative also seeks to improve patient transitions from one care setting to another, which will reduce the number of patients that need to be re-hospitalized.

Ultimately, Partnership for Patients is designed to improve patient care and reduce healthcare costs by preventing complications and re-hospitalizations, officials said.

"We know that we have a healthcare system that is rife with harm, with complications and with waste," said Joseph McCannon, senior adviser to the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

He said statistics show that more than 20 percent of chronically ill adults report having a serious adverse event associated with their treatment and that one in seven Medicaid beneficiaries have experienced a serious adverse medical event.

Anna Roth, chief executive officer of Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, said the hospital has reduced hospital-acquired infections by 50 percent over the past three years, reduced sepsis mortality rates by 40 percent over the last year and significantly reduced ventilator-related pneumonia over the last five years.          

"Here at Contra Costa Regional we're committed to providing the care our patients want, need and deserve," Roth said.

Miller, who was one of three people who wrote the Affordable Care Act, said he hoped the county hospital would become a model for how the Partnership for Patients can be successfully implemented to reduce hospital-acquired conditions, reduce re-admissions and reduce the cost of medical care.

"This is a place we can go to demonstrate to the nation how it can be done," he said.         

Because of the Affordable Care Act, children now can remain on their parents' medical plans until they are 26 years old and children can no longer be denied healthcare because of a pre-existing condition, Miller said.

Health officials believe the Partnership for Patients could reduce costs to Medicare by about $50 billion and result in billions more in Medicaid savings, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.