Hospital errors and unnecessary readmissions

How confident are you of the care you will receive in the hospital? Are you concerned about errors or the need for a readmission? Perhaps you should be as there is a major initiative to reduce both. That is a worthy goal of course, but one has to wonder why these two issues are problems at all with our expensive system. After all we go to the best doctors and hospitals don’t we?

HHS Announces Funds Available to Help Reduce Preventable Injuries and Readmissions

On June 22, 2011, HHS announced that up to $500 million in Partnership for Patients will be available to help hospitals, health care provider organizations and others improve care and stop millions of preventable injuries and complications related to health care acquired conditions and unnecessary readmissions. This funding, made available by the Affordable Care Act, will be awarded by the CMS Innovation Center through a solicitation and other procurements for federal contracts. The Partnership for Patients is a new public-private partnership that is aimed at improving the quality, safety, and affordability of health care. The Partnership’s two goals are to reduce harm in hospital settings by 40% and to reduce hospital readmissions by 20% over a three-year period. To achieve these goals, the Partnership is seeking to contract with large health care systems, associations, state organizations, or other interested parties to support hospitals in the hard work of redesigning care processes to reduce harm.