Improving Individual Patient Care: Hospitals

In partnership with Colorado healthcare providers, CFMC is working to ensure that care is safe and affordable for individuals, families, employers, and governments by reducing costs of care through continual improvement. In alignment with the National Quality Strategy, we will work to reduce healthcare-associated infections, healthcare-acquired conditions and to eliminate adverse drug events.

As the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for Colorado, CFMC can provide your facility with clinical resources and technical assistance at no cost. Learning and Action Networks will be established to bring together healthcare professionals, patients and other stakeholders around an evidence-based agenda to achieve rapid, wide-scale improvement. Our efforts will also parallel national initiatives centered on similar goals, such as the Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes Campaign and the Partnership for Patients.

Specific areas of work include:

The healthcare-associated infections (HAI) prevention learning and action network. Focus areas include reducing catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) by implementing the Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program (CUSP), surgical site infections (SSI), and clostridium difficile infections (CDI) in hospitals.

The partnership for reducing healthcare-acquired conditions (HACs) in nursing homes. The goal of the partnership is to achieve the national goal of reducing healthcare acquired conditions in nursing homes by 40% over the next three years. Initially the areas of focus will include the reduction of pressure ulcers and physical restraints then evolve into the statewide nursing home learning and action network. The learning and action network will address additional healthcare-acquired conditions, such as falls, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), as well as staff stability and consistent assignment.

The Patient Safety Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaboratives (PSPC) will bring together community teams that include pharmacists, physicians, patients, and a variety of healthcare settings. The goal of the collaborative is to reduce medication-related harm and prevent and eliminate adverse drug events in 265,000 lives per year. Using the successful Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) PSPC model, CFMC will participate in and lead multiple community teams. Please see http://www.hrsa.gov/publichealth/clinical/patientsafety/index.html for additional PSPC information.

Medicare Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) and Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting (OQR) Program technical assistance and quality improvement to support critical access, rural, and Inpatient Perspective Payment System (IPPS) participating hospitals.

CFMC hospital quality improvement contacts

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Hospital Quality Reporting

Resources

Colorado Foundation for Medical Care (CFMC), the Medicare quality improvement organization for Colorado, prepared this material under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents do not necessarily reflect CMS Policy.