Panel: Are your local hospitals targeting health care-acquired conditions? (Health Journalism 2012)
Speaker: Karen Adams, Ph.D., vice president, National Quality Forum
Panel description: In December, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded $218.8 million in federal contracts to 26 local, regional and national hospital organizations to improve patient safety and quality of care. The new Partnership for Patients program, called Hospital Engagement Networks, has enlisted 3,900 U.S. hospitals to commit to reducing hospital-acquired conditions, such as pressure sores and central line bloodstream infections, by 40 percent in two years and to cut hospital readmissions by 20 percent, saving 60,000 lives over five years. How is your local hospital planning to cut these infections and how will this affect patient care and hospital costs locally and nationally? This session will look at the Hospital Engagement Networks and how the largest hospital patient safety initiative to date will change the way hospital care is delivered.
