Kaiser Permanente Joins Federal Government's Patient Safety Initiative

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Jun 02, 2011, 11:55 ET

OAKLAND, Calif., June 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Furthering a long-standing commitment to delivering high-quality health care, Kaiser Permanente has joined the federal government's Partnership for Patients program - a $1 billion patient safety initiative aimed at improving care and reducing costs.

Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs is a new public-private coalition announced in April by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The program is designed to help improve the quality, safety, and affordability of health care for all Americans. Bringing together leaders of major hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, and patient advocates, along with state and federal governments, this initiative is a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly.

"Patient safety is one of our top priorities and is a critical component of all our quality improvement programs," said Jed Weissberg, MD, senior vice president, Hospitals, Quality and Care Delivery. "We believe this initiative is a great step forward in elevating patient safety as a high priority nationally, and we hope that it will help place greater emphasis on the importance of continual development, testing and implementation of new programs that are aimed at the achieving the goals of reducing harm."

The national initiative will focus on hospital safety with the goal of reducing preventable hospital-acquired conditions by 40 percent. This is expected to save 60,000 lives, and reducing hospital readmissions by 20 percent over the next three years. The partnership has the potential to save up to $35 billion in health care costs, including up to $10 billion for Medicare.

The initiative aligns with Kaiser Permanente's dedicated emphasis on patient safety and its organizational goal to prevent adverse events and health care-associated infections.

"Every patient has the right to safe and reliable health care," said Amy Compton-Phillips, MD, associate executive director, The Permanente Federation. "We are proud to support this new national initiative that aims to bring us one step closer to that goal." The Permanente Federation represents the national interests of the regional Permanente Medical Groups, which employ 15,000 physicians who care for 8.8 million Kaiser Permanente members.

Through its national patient safety and infection prevention and control programs, with participation by each of eight regions, Kaiser Permanente is able to share best practices and challenges, facilitate standardization of practices, products and surveillance methodologies, and implement performance improvement efforts. These strategies are designed to optimize patient safety, infection prevention and control efforts, and also to effectively address the ever-changing health care environment.

About Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America's leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, our mission is to provide high-quality, affordable health care services to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve 8.8 million members in nine states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: www.kp.org/newscenter.

http://www.kaiserpermanente.org

SOURCE Kaiser Permanente