CMS awards $10 million for 16 healthcare quality improvement organization programs
Specific initiatives include reducing healthcare associated infections and reducing readmissions and medication errors.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has awarded $10 million to 16 national organizations to advance local efforts to deliver better care at a lower cost.
The Quality Improvement Organizations are private, mostly nonprofit facilities staffed by doctors and other healthcare professionals. They get funding from Medicare's Quality Innovation Network to work with patients, providers and physicians on goals that meet CMS targets.
The awards for Special Innovation Projects are competitively based. Organizations were eligible to submit proposals for two types of projects: those that address issues of quality occurring within the local service area; and those focused on expanding the scope of quality improvement interventions with proven, but limited success.
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They were encouraged to propose projects that, among other goals, reduce mortality; lower costs; provide a higher return on investment; link value with quality; and encourage the use of alternative payment models.
Specific initiatives include reducing healthcare associated infections, reducing readmissions and medication errors, working with nursing homes to improve care for residents, supporting clinical practices in the coordination of care through health information technology, promoting prevention activities, reducing cardiac disease and diabetes, reducing healthcare disparities and improving patient and family engagement.
Additionally, CMS looked for evidence of partnerships at the community, regional and national levels.
"We recognize that there is tremendous quality work occurring in the field, and by requiring that the Quality Innovation Networks - Quality Improvement Organizations partner with organizations (federal, state, local community, and/or private), we can potentially capitalize on interventions that have not made it into mainstream use," CMS said.
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The program also provides technical assistance for improvement in value-based purchasing programs, including the physician value-based modifier program.
In total, CMS awarded close to $10 million for 16, two-year special innovation projects.
The recipients of the awards for improving quality locally are: Atlantic, for transforming end of life care and advanced care planning in New York counties; Great Plains for colorectal cancer screening in Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota; Qualis Health for standardizing discharge processes from short-stay skilled nursing facilities in Washington State and Idaho; Quality Insights, for palliative care and hospice referrals for heart failure patients in Delaware, Louisiana and West Virginia; Telligen, for readmission reduction in rural hospitals in Colorado; TMF for medication adherence in six municipalities in Puerto Rico; and VHQC, for stopping sepsis in long-term care in skilled nursing facilities in Maryland.
Award recipients for interventions are: Atlantic, for community-based sepsis initiatives in New York and South Carolina; HealthInsight, for expanding participation in chronic disease self-management education programs in Oregon; Health Services Advisory Group for hand hygiene and safe injections in ambulatory surgical centers in California; Mountain-Pacific Quality Health Foundation to improve inpatient admissions, emergency department visits and patient satisfaction in Montana; Qualis Health to reduce the percentage of patients with qualifying conditions that receive low value service among fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries in Washington State; Quality Insights to improve long-term acute care hospitals in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia; Telligen to improve nursing home quality and to compare outcomes on quality metrics in Iowa and Illinois; TMF to improve early detection and management of sepsis in two Texas communities; and VHQC, to assess hospital admissions in the last six months of life in the ACO setting.
Twitter: @SusanJMorse
