IPRO Wins Renewal of Key NY Hospital Work Hours Contract

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., Dec. 1, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- IPRO has won renewal of an important New York contract that oversees hospitals' compliance with critical physician-in-training work hour requirements.

The contract with the New York State Department of Health—which IPRO has held since the compliance program's inception in 2001---involves unannounced site visits, surveys, interviews and responsibility for complaint investigations at 115 teaching hospitals across the state. At issue is compliance with work rules that include limiting post-graduate physicians-in-training to a maximum of 80 hours on duty per week (averaged over four weeks), with mandatory weekly time-off requirements and rest time between duty periods, as well as requirements that residents receive in-person supervision by senior physicians.

The New York work rule requirements have long been viewed as models for the nation. In 2003 the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the national accrediting body for GME programs, implemented work hour rules similar to New York State's regulation, prompting IPRO to create vital cross-walk documentation.

"We are very pleased that New York State has again chosen IPRO to manage this critically-important program in a fair and impartial manner," according to Harry M. Feder, IPRO's Chief Operating Officer. "We're gratified for the support we receive from the hospital community as well as physician groups including the Committee of Interns and Residents."

To date, over a fourteen-year period, IPRO has conducted more than 1,900 surveys and 79,000 resident interviews in New York. Since 2001, the compliance rate of New York's teaching hospitals with State regulations has risen from 36% to 88%. 

A nationally recognized not-for-profit currently operating in 33 states and territories, IPRO offers a wide range of services including quality improvement and assessment activities; utilization review; independent review of patient appeals; data collection, analysis and validation; anti-fraud and abuse analytics and online performance reporting for government agencies, managed care organizations and private sector clients. In addition, IPRO operates the WhyNotTheBest website, a comprehensive quality improvement resource that analyzes the performance of 5,686 acute care hospitals in the U.S.

An ISO certified organization, IPRO is headquartered in Lake Success, NY, with offices in Albany NY, as well as Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and California. For more information about IPRO, please visit www.ipro.org.

SOURCE IPRO

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