Last month, CMS and Health and Human Services (HHS)
announced a national partnership that will combine support from the public and
private sector of healthcare to help improve the quality and safety of
healthcare. Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs has federal funding of as much as $1 billion from
the Affordable Care Act and other programs within HHS. The private sector can
pledge their support on the Partnership for Patients website. Currently, the
1,000+ members include colleges of pharmacy, hospitals, physicians, health
departments, large employers, and ASHP.
Although quality is mentioned as one of the two main issues
that need support from the partnership, safety seems to be in the forefront. Their
overarching principles are to keep patients from getting injured or sicker by
decreasing hospital acquired conditions by 40% compared to 2010 and to help
patients heal without complications by improving transitions of care. The
Partnership for Patients website lists areas of focus: adverse drug events,
pressure ulcers, surgical site infections, ventilator-associated pneumonia,
venous thromboembolism, and a few others.
So now that we all know the facts… I see the area of focus
list above and think to myself “these are all issues pharmacists can directly
help with!” In fact, CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, MD specifically
mentioned the role of pharmacists several times when this partnership was
unveiled to the public. CMS and HHS understand the role that the pharmacist can
play with helping with decreasing hospital acquired conditions and especially
with transitions of care. Regardless of the politics behind healthcare reform
and money allocations, this sounds like the perfect opportunity for pharmacists
to get involved early and designate some of this money to our services. Improving
transitions of care sounds like something that’s especially up our alley. We
can help with discharge and MTM, which are two things that can make a big
impact in preventing readmissions due to complications.
The leaders within ASHP membership have worked hard to
outline their thoughts on the future within the PPMI. They recognized that we
need to take an active role to help transform and adapt our roles as
pharmacists as healthcare changes. The PPMI recognizes our role within patient
care as hands on and has created a central goal of expanding our services to
all health-system facilities across the country. It also recognizes that
pharmacists need to continue to work as members within the healthcare team,
because it will be vital to have physicians and nurses on board with the PPMI
as well. Because PPMI is in its’ planning stages, it is not clear how it will
be implemented or funded. I think that the funding from the Partnership for
Patients would be a great opportunity for us to make economic gains within the
health-system for our services.
It is important to point out that nowhere does this
partnership or the press releases say that current healthcare workers aren’t
doing their job to help patients. At the press briefing, Dr. Berwick said "The
work force is not the problem. Doctors and nurses and pharmacists and all other
health care staff and managers, they want to offer safe care...Our health care
people come to work every day to do everything they possibly can to place patients
on the road to health. Still despite that, millions of patients get injured not
because of the work force but because of defects in the care system in which
those good people get trapped, the good people who do the work. Good people get
trapped in bad systems. In fact actually the heroic efforts of doctors and
nurses and pharmacists and others, they're the last dike against the problem.”
So how can we, as vital healthcare providers, help with the
Partnership for Patients? First of all, we can join the partnership, stay up to
date on its’ progress, and support the initiatives as they are developed. The
partnership will never make it out of its’ infancy if it does not have
widespread national support and promotion. Secondly, we can notify the
health-systems or companies that we work for and even our colleagues to gain
their support. Finally, we can also continue to do what we do best, help
patients while they are inpatient to prevent complications, improve patient
care at discharge, and provide quality pharmacy services through counseling,
DUE, and MTM.