Hospital demonstration project boosts quality and patient outcomes
The CMS/Premier healthcare alliance Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration™ (HQID) project served as a test-bed for various provisions in the healthcare reform law. Hospitals across the country that participated in the project are demonstrating they are among the best when it comes to high-quality healthcare.
Over six years, participating hospitals have improved quality scores by an average of 18.6 percent while outperforming non-participants. They have saved an estimated 8,500 heart attack patients and administered more than 960,000 additional evidence-based measures to 2.7 million patients. They also received incentive payments of more than $60 million from CMS for performance improvement and for attaining quality goals.
Hospitals that are serious about improving care and changing the status quo were involved in this project and are providing lessons learned that can help others save lives and better craft rules to govern the new value-based purchasing program, which is now law under health reform.
These organizations led the way, and continue to do so, and should be commended for their achievements. HQID hospitals included small/large, urban/rural and teaching/non-teaching facilities that volunteered to report their quality data for six high-volume inpatient conditions using national measures of quality care.
A number of hospitals are considered top performers in the HQID project. Some of those include:
- Aurora Health Care
- Bon Secours Health System
- Texas Health Resources
- CaroMont Health Gaston Memorial Hospital
- Staten Island University Hospital, Staten Island N.Y. (North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System)
- Hackensack University Medical Center
- South Miami Hospital (Baptist Health South Florida)
- Alegent Health Bergan Mercy Medical Center
- Fairview Southdale Hospital (Fairview Health Services)
- Memorial Regional Medical Center (Bon Secours Richmond Health System)
True leaders! You can view the full list of hospitals by clicking here.
Ed Howe blogs regularly at Action for Better Healthcare.
