VHA Hospital Engagement Network Extended for Additional Year

IRVING, Texas, Jan. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- VHA Inc., the national network of not-for-profit health care organizations, announced that its Hospital Engagement Network (HEN) will continue its quality improvement efforts to reduce hospital-acquired conditions by 40% and reduce readmissions by 20% for an additional year. VHA's HEN, part of the federal Partnership for Patients initiative, is the third largest in the country and helps its nearly 200 participating hospitals improve in ten areas of focus ranging from falls and surgical site infections to readmissions.

VHA's HEN hospitals have, in aggregate, already exceeded the Partnership's 40% improvement goal in ventilator-associated pneumonia, early elective delivery, and central line-associated blood stream infections and are making strong progress in other areas of focus. The implementation of an intensive Early Elective Delivery reduction program for those VHA HEN hospitals with the greatest need contributed to its strong results. VHA's HEN has provided more than 3,000 individualized performance improvement coaching sessions and 644 on-site visits to help our HEN hospitals work through any obstacles to improvement. In addition, we have provided nearly 200 educational events to more than 12,000 participants.

"VHA has a long-standing commitment to help hospitals improve their operational, clinical and financial performance and we are excited to be able to continue our work with Partnership for Patients," said Dr. Keith Kosel, vice president and program director for VHA's HEN. "The impact and effectiveness of VHA's HEN can clearly be seen through the results realized by our hospital participants."

As a HEN, VHA will continue to work with participants to make care safer, more reliable, and less costly by meeting the goals set by the Partnership for Patients through December 2014. Highlights for the coming year include:

• Continued focus on hospitals' frontline staff to drive reductions in patient harm through VHA's Rapid Adoption Networks™, a proprietary improvement framework that helps address hospitals' most pressing needs through local innovation and prototyping.
• Increased focus on strengthening hospital leadership through a program to improve the organization's accountability and enhance its capacity for patient safety work.
• Implementation of a Patient/Community Awareness Campaign to educate expectant mothers and their communities on the health benefits of full-term pregnancies, in an effort to reduce the demand for early elective deliveries.
• Introduction of the VHA HEN Hospital Mentor Program to pair leading performing hospitals with those that may be struggling in an effort to reduce patient harm through collaboration and sharing of leading practices.
• Increased efforts to strengthen patient and family engagement through collaboration with nationally recognized experts in the field.

A new challenge for 2014 has been issued by the Partnership for Patients to all 26 HENs to recruit additional hospitals for their networks. VHA will actively encourage member hospitals that are not currently participating in a HEN to join.

For nearly 37 years, VHA has successfully designed, developed and implemented many clinical and patient safety improvement collaboratives for its members. This expertise is also available through VHA's industry-leading clinical quality improvement tools such as VHA IMPERATIV™ and VHA's Leading Practice Blueprints™ as well as its peer-to-peer learning networks.

About VHA
VHA Inc. is a national network of non-for-profit health care organizations working together to improve performance and efficiency in clinical, financial and operational management. Since 1977, when VHA established the first hospital membership organization, the company has applied its knowledge in analytics, contracting, consulting and network development to help members can customers achieve their strategic objectives. In 2012, VHA delivered $1.9 billion in savings and additional value to members. Serving 5,100 health system members and affiliates, VHA represents more than a quarter of the nation's hospitals. VHA also serves more than 118,000 non-acute health care customers enterprise-wide. VHA is based in Irving, Texas, and has 13 regional offices across the U.S. VHA, together with UHC, owns Novation, a supply chain company, and its subsidiary aptitude™, the health care industry's first online direct market for contracting. VHA also owns Provista, a supply chain company serving the non-acute market as well as hospitality, education and corporate markets. For more information, visit www.vha.com and follow us on Twitter (@VHAInc).

SOURCE VHA Inc.