The Irving, TX-based Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council Foundation (DFWHC Foundation) announced today it was awarded approximately $2.1 million by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) over two years to provide regional education, training and measurement of improvement of healthcare acquired conditions and readmissions for up to 77 hospitals. The award is part of the National Partnership for Patients Campaign, a project created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help hospitals and health care providers improve care. Funding of $500 million, made available by the Affordable Care Act, is being distributed nationally by CMS’s Innovation Center through solicitation and other procurements for federal contracts.
“The DFWHC Foundation is pleased to participate in the hospital engagement contractor process with CMS,” said W. Stephen Love, president and chief executive officer of DFWHC. “We have actively supported the Partnership for Patients initiative since its inception in April of 2011.”
Partnership for Patients is a “priority project” designed to reduce inpatient harm by 40 percent and readmissions by 20 percent over the next three years. The award (contract number #HHSM-500-2012-00025C, entitled “Hospital Engagement Contractor for Partnership for Patients Initiative”) designates the DFWHC Foundation as one of 26 official Hospital Engagement Contractors. The DFWHC Foundation will be expected to design and conduct training events for hospitals addressing adverse drug events, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, central line-associated blood stream infections, injuries from falls or immobility, obstetrical adverse events, pressure ulcers, surgical site infections, venous thrombosis, ventilator-associated pneumonia and preventable readmissions.
“We are honored to be named as an official Hospital Engagement Contractor,” said Kristin Jenkins, president of the DFWHC Foundation. “We anticipate these training events will save Texas hospitals in education costs for many years. Additionally, the information we will share will be nationally vetted and provided through content experts from CMS.”
The DFWHC Foundation’s training events will be rooted in establishing and measuring ongoing improvement projects in local hospitals. The educational activities will be designed to achieve reductions in the ten core events and produce measurable improvements. The DFWHC Foundation’s success with the monetary award will be assessed through measurements of the incidence of the core events.
The DFWHC Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to continually improve the community’s health by promoting safe, high quality, cost effective, accessible and equitable healthcare and by strengthening the healthcare workforce through education and research.