Our Contra Costa Regional Medical Center (CCRMC) and Health Centers are a proud partner with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs initiative. Part of the Affordable Care Act, the initiative brings together health care, business and government leaders to make hospital care safer, more reliable and less costly.
CCRMC was among first 56 organizations nationwide to sign the Partnership pledge and we were honored to be selected as the site for the regional launch of the initiative on April 22, 2011. At the launch event held in front of our hospital, Congressman George Miller, HHS Regional Director Herb Schultz and Joseph McCannon, Senior Advisor with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, described CCRMC as a model for the rest for the rest of the country. Joseph McCannon congratulated CCRMC and the Health Centers. “This is a remarkable community. The work that you are doing is just fantastic,” McCannon said, adding that this initiative is part of health care reform‘s focus on “increased reliability in the healthcare system and making the system safer, having it provide results of the kind we are seeing here in Contra Costa that will reduce harm to patients in very significant ways.”
Left to right: CMS Regional Administrator David Sayen, CCRMC CEO Anna Roth, Congressman George Miller, HHS Regional Director Herb Schultz and CMS Regional Chief Medical Officer Dr. Betsy Thompson.
CEO Anna Roth (right) talks about CCRMC’s patient safety improvements with Joseph McCannon with CMS during a tour of the hospital.
CCRMC has had a longstanding commitment to patient safety and is excited to join other hospitals across the nation in this partnership. CCRMC has had successes—having reduced health care associated infections by more than 40 percent in the last 3 years including drastically reducing ventilator-associated pneumonia—and recognizes there is still much more that can be done.
As part of the partnership, CCRMC has pledged along with other hospitals to reduce preventable hospital-acquired conditions by 40 percent and reduce hospital readmissions by 20 percent in the next three years. CCRMC is excited to participate in this partnership and taking the next steps to continue to improve care for the community.
Contra Costa Regional Medical Center is part of Contra Cost Health Services, a comprehensive health system serving Contra Costa County that includes eight health centers.
Excerpt from CCRMC/HCs CEO Anna Roth’s statement from the April 22 initiative launch
We are very excited to be part of the new Partnership for Patients initiative. We are here today to reaffirm our promise to our community. As a public hospital, we recognize we play a critical role in our community‘s health and we are proud to be among the first hospitals in the nation to take this pledge to improve care and save lives.
The partnership focuses on reducing hospital-acquired conditions and also on helping patients heal without complications to reduce the number of times they need to come back to the hospital. As medicine and science have advanced, we now know that we can prevent these complications more and more—improving a patient‘s chance of healing both in the hospital and once they have gone home.
This is a tough conversation for healthcare providers to have, but one that must take place.
We are committed to continuing to provide the care that our community wants needs and deserves.
Our commitment to patient safety has been longstanding and we join other hospitals across the nation in recognizing we can do more.
We should be proud of the work and the many milestones we have achieved.
Here at Contra Costa, we have had successes: We have reduced health care associated infections by 50 percent in the last 3 years. We also have made great strides with ventilator-associated pneumonia—a serious infection people can get when they are on ventilators. In Contra Costa, we are have sharply decreased these infections and hope in the next few years to eliminate this type of infection in our hospital.
These are just a few examples of what can be done. But there is still much more that can and should be done and the Partnerships for Patients will help us do this. It‘s time to challenge ourselves. We can do better.
As part of the partnership, we have pledged to reduce preventable hospital-acquired conditions by 40 percent and to reduce hospital readmissions by 20 percent over the next three years.
We are pleased to participate in this partnership and to continue improving care for our community. We look forward to a renewed commitment from ourselves and our partners to improve patient safety, and we welcome the opportunity to partner with others to make this possible.