HHS announces nationwide effort to reduce medical errors

The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a new program, developed under the Affordable Care Act, that's aimed at eliminating medical errors and reducing healthcare costs on a national scale.

The program, Partners for Patients, could save up to $50 billion in costs associated with prevented medical errors and help save 60,000 lives over the next three years, according to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a press conference Tuesday morning.

Sorrel King, a patient advocate who lost a child to medical errors, said such errors cause the same number of deaths as a jumbo jet crashing every day, yet not enough has been done to fix the problem.

"We cannot keep going at the pace we've been going," she said.

[See also: Report shows hospital errors harm 14 percent of Medicare patients.]

HHS will initially invest $1 billion in the program, to be spent on a total medical error elimination demonstration project and a nationwide education program, according to Sebelius. Major hospitals, employers, health plans, physicians, nurses and patient advocates have pledged commitment to the initiative, she said.

Initial goals will include cutting hospital-acquired infections in Medicare patients by 40 percent and readmission by 20 percent over the next three years, Sebelius said.

The program will also ask hospitals to focus on nine types of medical errors and complications, including  adverse drug reactions, pressure ulcers, childbirth complications and surgical site infections, she said.

Donald Berwick, MD, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the program is not about blaming healthcare providers for medical errors, but about supporting them through spreading knowledge of best practices, transparency and "very thoughtfully, respectfully" providing incentives for providers that reduce medical errors.

"The workforce is not the problem," Berwick said. "Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, managers, all want to do no harm. They try to do that everyday, in everything they possibly can. Still, millions get injured because of defects in the system, despite the heroic efforts of providers."

Berwick said HHS will not approach the program as "one size fits all," but will focus on local strategies. A top-down approach will not work, he said.

The program's innovation center will help hospitals adopt effective, evidence-based care improvements to target preventable patient injuries on a local level, developing innovative approaches to spreading and sharing strategies among public and private partners in all states, he said.

In addition, CMS will launch a pilot within the next few months that will involve vangaurd healthcare organizations striving to eliminate virtually all medical errors, Berwick said.

Achieving even the minimal goals will require a culture change from providers, education on best practices and execution on a national scale, Berwick said.

"Why not bring excellence to full scale? We are in this together. We have to be in this together," he said. "The enemy is not each other; the enemy is harm itself."

Berwick said stakeholders across the board have stepped up to participate. "I have been working on patient safety for the better part of 20 years, and I've never seen antying like this," he said.

David Cote, CEO of Honeywell and a Business Roundtable member, said, "We think this could be huge." He predicted there will be "howls of protest," however, over the need for metrics, though they're "an essential part of the process."

"We can't support anything that doesn't produce a quality outcome," Cote said. "It doesn't make sense."

America's Health Insurance Plans President and CEO Karen Ignagni said AHIP supports the effort.

Leaders of the Business Roundtable support the program and urged purchasers of employer-sponsored health coverage to use market-based incentives to promote improvements in safety and work with other private payers, states and the federal government to measure performance on quality and safety.

Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, said the AHA is committed to the new program. "The AHA will be an active partner with HHS in this effort and we will spotlight best practices and share them broadly with the field and link them to the assistance HHS is making available," he said.

The HHS announcemnt follows Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) recent proposal to convert Medicare and Medicaid into consumer-directed health systems by replacing current programs with tax credits and vouchers. According to Ryan, his plan would encourage consumers to purchase the safest and most efficient healthcare.

At the press conference, Sebelius said she does not believe Ryan's plan adequately addresses quality of care.

[Read more about Ryan's plan: Republicans' 2012 budget plan alters Medicare, Medicaid.]