We hear every day about the challenges hospitals face in this climate of health care reform. It can be hard in the midst of the current health care transformation to take a moment to celebrate hospitals’ victories, but it is important every now and then to do just that.

HASC’s work in collaboration with National Health Foundation (NHF) had led to several positive gains for hospitals. One of the most notable has been Patient Safety First…a California Partnership for Health, which was launched in 2010 to improve quality of care, reduce health care costs and ultimately save lives by improving patient safety and perinatal care in California. Patient Safety First (PSF) is a groundbreaking partnership between National Health Foundation, California’s Regional Hospital Associations, Anthem Blue Cross and more than 160 hospitals across the state. Over the first three years (2010-2012) of this program, hospitals reported phenomenal results, including:

• 74% reduction in early elective deliveries prior to 39 weeks gestational age
• 57% reduction in cases of Ventilator Assisted Pneumonia
• 43% reduction in cases of Central Line Blood Stream Infections
• 26% reduction in Sepsis mortality
• 3,576 deaths avoided as a result of reduction in Sepsis mortality
• $63 million in costs avoided for participating hospitals

The efforts of Patient Safety First have been recognized by several awards, most notably the esteemed 2013 John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award from the National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission.

Based on the success of the first three years of this initiative, Patient Safety First entered into Phase 2 in 2013 and is currently in its fifth year of operation. 2014 focus areas include: Sepsis Mortality, C. Difficile, Surgical Safety, Early Elective Deliveries under 39 weeks and C-Section Rates.

Another noteworthy program through which hospitals have saved money and improved the quality of patient care is the Recuperative Care program, with centers located in Los Angeles and Orange County as well as a recently opened location in the San Gabriel Valley. Thousands of the patients admitted to hospitals each year are homeless. Once discharged, they have no place to recover and few ways to follow the doctor’s orders for rest, wound care and medication. As a result, many require repeat hospitalization. Out of the 2,000 patients served by NHF’s Recuperative Care program to date, only 10 percent have been readmitted to a hospital following recovery at a recuperative care center. But most impressive is the fact that more than 44 percent of the patients treated in this program are placed in permanent or temporary housing following care and are successfully transitioned back into the community. Since its inception in 2010, this innovative program has enabled our health care system to avoid more than $14 million in unnecessary costs.

On the current agenda, HASC plans to partner with National Health Foundation and the Society for Hospital Medicine to seek a $1 million grant from a private foundation to implement the Most Appropriate Care Initiative, with the objective of reducing non-value added tests and procedures in hospitals. Ample evidence suggests that unnecessary tests and procedures are ordered by physicians when better alternatives are available. Most non-value added tests and procedures are low cost and low risk; but some are high cost and carry a measurable degree of actually doing harm.

Why is this important? Appropriateness of care is a factor in:

• Reducing operating costs per case
• Alignment of provider and payer incentives
• Shift to value-based purchasing
• Engaging physicians in improving the culture of quality
• Redesigning care processes
• Pay for performance

As we forge ahead with all of the challenges we face, let’s not forget what we have accomplished along the way.

I’d appreciate your thoughts.