Southern California Patient Safety Collaborative Working to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Conditions and Sepsis, Improve Perinatal Care among 96 Hospital Participants; Project Addressing Pressing Issues Presented by Health Reform
LOS ANGELES & CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- To help reduce avoidable patient harm and healthcare costs, 96 members of the Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC) will have access to a knowledge and expertise-sharing portal to develop and share evidence-based best practices and proven strategies for improving patient safety.
Participants in HASC’s Southern California Patient Safety Collaborative (SCPSC) will also use the Premier healthcare alliance’s Premier Performance Improvement Portal™ (PI Portal), a knowledge exchange community of more than 1,500 healthcare experts nationwide, to track improvements against state and national benchmarks from the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce (CHART), Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and The Joint Commission.
As part of the partnership of HASC and the National Health Foundation funded by Anthem Blue Cross and known as Patient Safety First…A California Partnership for Health, the SCPSC is working to reduce hospital-acquired conditions, including healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), and other causes of patient harm such as:
- Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP)
- Central line related bloodstream infections
- Catheter-associated urinary tract infections
- Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aurea (MRSA)
- Mortality from sepsis
- Pressure ulcers
The SCPSC is also addressing perinatal safety, working to reduce elective deliveries prior to 39 weeks.
“The goal of the SCPSC is to provide participants with practical ideas to prevent avoidable harm and improve the capacity to implement them,” said Catherine Carson, vice president of Quality & Performance Improvement for HASC. “To accomplish this, we needed an expanded community by which large numbers of hospitals are able to share ideas and accelerate the implementation of evidence-based practices. Premier was able to provide just that.”
According to Premier President and CEO Susan DeVore, “Health reform measures will tie a significant portion of a hospital’s total reimbursement to quality and outcomes. As a result, providers must improve their clinical processes, increase adherence to the evidence-based guidelines, reduce readmissions and hospital-acquired conditions and control costs. SCPSC participants are addressing these issues and achieving success.”
SCPSC participants will benefit from lessons learned by hospitals participating in collaborative projects run by Premier, including the Perinatal Safety Initiative and QUEST®: High Performing Hospitals. Results from the first year of the QUEST project show that the original 157 QUEST hospitals have saved an estimated total of 8,043 lives and $577 million in one year. Of the approximately 2.3 million patients treated annually in these hospitals, 24,818 additional patients received treatments that met the highest quality patient care standards when compared to baseline performance at the outset of the project.
Premier’s PI Portal is an online community containing clinical, operational and financial best-practice tools and methodologies from the nation's top performing hospitals. A PI Portal special information-sharing community has been developed to serve as one place for all SCPSC participants to access important materials and successful strategies from HASC and Premier alliance member hospitals, and to identify and promote existing and new processes for prevention.
“The portal serves as a library of performance improvement advice and best practices,” said Keith J. Figlioli, senior vice president for Premier Healthcare Informatics. “It’s a networking community for knowledge sharing and interaction with industry specialists, hospital and health system peers and Premier's knowledge experts.”
The Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC), founded in 1923, is a not-for-profit 501(c)(6) regional trade association. Its mission is to serve the political, economic, informational and educational needs of hospitals and to help improve the quality and accessibility of health services. Over the years, HASC has profoundly influenced the way healthcare is organized, financed and delivered. HASC consists of more than 170 hospitals (public, private, not-for-profit and for-profit). The region covers six counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura.
About the Premier healthcare alliance, 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,300 U.S. hospitals and 67,000-plus other healthcare sites working together to achieve high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has offices in San Diego, Philadelphia and Washington. www.premierinc.com
CONTACT:
Premier Inc.
Alven Weil, 704-733-5797
[email protected]
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