Successfully coordinating the efforts between various health and community organizations and engaging patients in a meaningful way are central issues to consider when it comes to the Partnership for Patients initiative, according to several expert panelists speaking on a live webinar Wednesday.
During the webinar hosted by the Partnership for Patients-National Priorities Partnership, experts discussed how to create and sustain meaningful relationships with community groups, including healthcare organizations, government support services and non-profit groups, as well as how to generate these actions within organizations nationwide.
The Department of Health and Human Services initiative, Partnership for Patients, is a public-private partnership that aims to improve the quality, safety and affordability of healthcare for all Americans by keeping patients from getting injured or sicker, and helping them heal without complication resulting in hospital readmissions.
The National Priorities Partnership (NPP), convened by the National Quality Forum, is a multi-stakeholder group including organizations representing the interests of consumers, purchasers, healthcare providers and professionals, state-based associations, community collaborative and regional alliances, government agencies, health plans, accreditation and certification bodies and supplier and industry groups.
Richard Antonelli, medical director for integrated care at Children’s Hospital Boston and one of the webinar’s panelists, said optimal value from the partnership will only result if there is an integrated care system across all sectors of the community.
“Patients need to receive the right care at the right time at the right place,” he said. “There should be shared quality goals across all providers … and shared fiscal accountability across all stakeholders that is both community and hospital-based.”
Another webinar panelist, Melinda West, Intermediate Care Unit manager at Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay, Ore., said her community of healthcare organizations created care transition goals.
Some of the care transition goals include avoiding the breakdown of the care plan through all care transitions, conveying important next steps at each transition of care, providing clear and consistent discharge instructions at each care transition and assuring that life-sustaining equipment and medications are in place prior to care transitions, she said.
“Through communicating, we have built a safety net for the patients with each area being unique and important. We have been able to decrease our hospital readmissions this way,” said West. “Poorly executed transitions in care negatively impact patients’ health and well-being, family resources and unnecessarily increase cost incurred by the healthcare system.”
Heather O’Donnell, one of the panelists and director of planning for healthcare reform at CJE Senior Life in Chicago, said “reducing readmissions for each of our hospital partners is a top priority in order to avoid Medicare penalties and improving the quality of care for patients. This is one of our goals in creating CJE Transitional Care Collaborative, which has a program rollout this spring. We plan to provide transitional care services to over 2,700 patients a year.”
“We plan to provide home visits with 24-72 hours of a patient’s discharge followed by weekly follow-up phone calls over 30 days following discharge,” she said. “We also plan on using data sharing to monitor outcomes.”
To learn more about the Partnership for Patients, visit: http://www.qualityforum.org/Setting_Priorities/NPP/National_Priorities_Partnership.aspx.