Drug Safety

Attention Medicare Providers!

As you know, CFMC is the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) in the state of Colorado and contracts with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide quality improvement technical assistance to Colorado providers. For specifics on what we have been able to help the Colorado community accomplish during the 2005 – 2008 Scope of Work, please see Partners in Colorado Healthcare Improvement: 8th Scope of Work and CMS Targets Readmission Through Payment Audits; ‘Coaching’ Model Reduces Rates: Care Transitions pages.

In an effort to continue to strengthen patient safety and quality improvement, the CMS National Patient Safety Initiative (NPSI) under the 9th Scope of Work (SOW) (August 1, 2008 – July 31, 2011) is designed to address care systems to prevent patient harm. One area of the Patient Safety Theme is Drug Safety, which will focus on potentially inappropriate medications and drug-on-drug interactions. CFMC has learned that there are many participants in the process of evaluating medications for each patient: physicians, nurses, pharmacists, patient, family, insurance, and others. In order to have the greatest impact, these participants need to work together. Thus, we plan to focus on patient transitions between providers in our patient safety-related improvement activities.

As always, we appreciate your continued activities to improve the quality of care in your care setting. We also look forward to strengthening our working relationship. If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Cindy Sawyer, Pharmacist, at 303.931.0027 or csawyer@cfmc.org (Michelle Mills, Patient Safety Project Director, is also available at 303.847.1727 or mmills@coqio.sdps.org). Remember that there are no costs associated with services provided by CFMC.

Helpful Materials, Links, and Articles

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Questions?

For additional information about CFMC’s drug safety project, please contact Cindy Sawyer, Pharmacist, at 303.931.0027 or csawyer@cfmc.org, or contact Marcy Cameron, Project Assistant, at 303.784.5795 or mcameron@coqio.sdps.org.

The 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.