Patient Safety Improvement Nationwide Gets Support from the CDC

On Tuesday of this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced an initiative focused on protecting patients in America’s health care centers.

Known as the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs, the program is supported by several federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The design of the program is designed to improve patient care by preventing medical conditions which are often acquired during a hospital or health center visit.

Some of the conditions that are typical include: infections, falls, pressure ulcers (or bed sores), and blood clots (known as deep vein thrombosis).

“Americans expect and deserve safe health care,” said CDC director Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. who has made patient safety a top priority at CDC. “CDC has an established track record of improving the quality of health care delivery. This new initiative will help protect patients and ensure that they live healthier, longer, and more productive lives while reducing healthcare costs.”

According to statistics, 1 in 20 patients has an infection related to hospital care at any given time. This represents a substantial cost to the health care system, estimated to be in the billions each year. Reducing these cases can relieve that strain, free up costs and resources, and ultimately save tens of thousands of lives.

To coordinate efforts among various agencies, the CDC works with federal, state and local public health and healthcare partners to prevent these conditions. Below, from the statement on the CDC web site, are some of the ways that the CDC is working to implement life and money saving measures.

•CDC conducts rapid field investigations to address emerging health care safety issues.
•CDC conducts cutting-edge infection prevention research, turning that knowledge into evidence-based guidelines that health care providers can use.
◦Several published studies have shown that health care-associated infections (HAIs) can be decreased as much as 70 percent when existing CDC prevention recommendations are put into place. [See top CDC prevention recommendations]
•CDC has funded 51 locally based HAI coordinators and has supported 30 state-based HAI prevention networks to drive progress toward goals in the HHS Action Plan to Eliminate Healthcare-associated Infections.
•CDC is working with patient and professional organizations to raise awareness and promote the implementation of current clinical guidelines for the prevention of deep vein thrombosis. CDC has been actively working to prevent deep vein thrombosis by collecting statewide registry data and tracking the quality of hospitalized stroke patients for the past decade through the Paul Coverdell National Acute Stroke Registry.
•CDC has developed a fall risk assessment tool for practitioners that can be used in clinical settings, because the most effective single approach for fall prevention is an individualized risk factor assessment by a physician or health care provider coupled with referral and treatment.