Partnership for Patients
In April 2011, the White House Administration unveiled a new Patient Safety initiative - Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs - a public/private partnership to improve the quality, safety, and affordability of health care for all Americans. Led by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Partnership for Patients initiative highlights the administration’s priority to improve the quality of health care delivery. To date, over 2,000 public and private health care facilities have signed a pledge promising to work toward achieving these ambitious goals. The Military Health System (MHS) is a key partner in this initiative, and leadership has pledged its support on behalf of all MHS facilities to make care safer, more reliable and less costly for war fighters and their families.
The two goals of this partnership are to:
- Keep patients from getting injured or sicker. By the end of 2013, preventable hospital-acquired conditions would decrease by 40% compared to 2010. Achieving this goal would mean approximately 1.8 million fewer injuries to patients with more than 60,000 lives saved over three years.
- Help patients heal without complication. By the end of 2013, preventable complications during a transition from one care setting to another would be decreased so that all hospital re-admissions would be reduced by 20% compared to 2010. Achieving this goal would mean more than 1.6 million patients would recover from illness without suffering a preventable complication requiring re-hospitalization within 30 days of discharge.
Below are the 10 initiatives that NMCP has begun. Click on each one to learn more: