September 20, 2011

M11-035

To: SPEEA Council

From: SPEEA Organizational Planning Committee (Org Planning).

Subject: Pre-Submitted New Business – Support SPEEA joining the “Partnership for Patients”. See Attachment

Background

The Partnership for Patients brings together leaders of major hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, and patient advocates along with state and federal governments in a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly. 

The two goals of this new partnership are to:

· Keep patients from getting injured or sicker. By the end of 2013, decrease by 40% compared to 2010 preventable hospital-acquired conditions. Achieving this goal would mean approximately 1.8 million fewer injuries to patients with more than 60,000 lives saved over three years.

· Help patients heal without complication. By the end of 2013, reduce preventable complications during a transition from one care setting to another so that all hospital readmissions would be reduced by 20% compared to 2010.  Achieving this goal would mean more than 1.6 million patients would recover from illness without suffering a preventable complication requiring re-hospitalization within 30 days of discharge.   

Achieving these goals will save lives and prevent injuries to millions of Americans, and has the potential to save up to $35 billion across the health care system, including up to $10 billion in Medicare savings, over the next three years.  Over the next ten years, it could reduce costs to Medicare by about $50 billion and result in billions more in Medicaid savings.  This will help put our nation on the path toward a more sustainable health care system.

Joining the partnership is a cost-free way to indicate our willingness to:

· Encourage market-based incentives, that may include hospital insurance payments (reimbursements), to promote improvements in safety and other dimensions of quality and value;

· Work with other private payers, states and the federal government to align our efforts to measure performance on quality and safety – so that patients and clinicians have the best possible information and the burden on hospitals and other providers is minimized; and

· Share information with our employees, members or beneficiaries so they can engage as active partners in getting better, safer care.

Immediate areas of focus include situations where patients suffer from conditions that occur after they enter the hospital such as:

• Adverse Drug Events
• Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI)
• Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI)
• Injuries from Falls and Immobility
• Obstetrical Adverse Events
• Pressure Ulcers
• Surgical Site Infections
• Venous Thromboembolism (VTE)
• Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia (VAP)
• Other Hospital-Acquired Conditions

The Partnership support quality improvement initiatives that will include

• Forming improvement teams for each adverse event,
• Assessing and developing basic improvement skills and knowledge of staff
• Setting expectations for a fast-moving, iterative work environment.
• Making improvement measure results available internally and with a quick turnaround.

More information can be found here:

http://www.healthcare.gov/compare/partnership-for-patients/index.html

SPEEA Org. Planning Committee Recommendation

The SPEEA Organizational Committee recommend passage of this motion. There is no Cost to SPEEA other than printing information in our publications and websites. Government, Unions and Employers are involved with this. Boeing is not a part of Partnership for patients.

Motion

With the goal of keeping SPEEA members, dependants and retirees from getting injured or sicker and helping patients heal without complication, it is moved that: SPEEA joins the “Partnership for Patients”.   By joining the partnership, SPEEA will add our voice to the labor unions and other organizations that have joined and will help communicate the program objectives and results with our membership.