IPRO Honors Upper Capital Region Health Care Providers

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., April 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- IPRO is honoring a select group of health care providers in the Upper Capital Region who have signed on to a three-year project aimed at making dramatic improvements in care transitions and reducing avoidable readmissions to hospitals. The providers volunteering to participate in the high-profile Care Transitions Project include hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, physicians' offices, rehab centers, dialysis centers and hospices located in the counties of Warren, Washington, Rensselaer, Schenectady and Saratoga. Nationally, almost 20% of Medicare beneficiaries are readmitted to hospitals within 30 days of discharge, while the vast majority of these readmissions may be preventable. Unplanned re-hospitalizations accounted for an estimated $17.4 billion in Medicare spending in 2004.

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As the not-for-profit Medicare-funded Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for New York, IPRO works with providers across the state to improve performance on a series of inpatient and outpatient quality measures. The Care Transitions Project takes an innovative, community-based approach that emphasizes collaboration across settings and among distinct provider groups in order to better coordinate care for Medicare beneficiaries with chronic illnesses. IPRO is one of fourteen QIOs nationally selected by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for this initiative.

"We congratulate those Capital Region providers who are joining together to make dramatic improvements in care continuity, with the goal of reducing costly and often unnecessary readmissions to hospitals," according to Clare Bradley, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer at IPRO. "To do this, we need to do a better job of identifying high-risk patients before discharge and implementing post-discharge care plans that address contingencies. We also need to make sure reliable transfer information gets shared across settings."

Health care providers participating in this initiative are establishing systems to ensure reliable transfer of patient information across settings and are working to increase patient/caregiver satisfaction by keeping patients and their family members better informed about their conditions and medications.

In addition to working with health care providers and community leaders, IPRO is helping to empower the community by providing tools and information to help patients better manage their health care, keep track of their medications and support follow-up care post discharge from the hospital. The Personal Health Record (PHR) is an example of one of the helpful tools supported within this project. The PHR is a booklet for people to record, store and share all of their essential health care information with their health care providers.

    Upper Capital Region providers and stakeholders currently participating
    in the project include:

     Adirondack Tri-County Nursing & Rehabilitation Center
     Baptist Health Nursing and Rehabilitation Center
     Capital Care Medical Group
     Capital District Physicians Health Plan
     Community Hospice
     Ellis Hospital
     Fort Hudson Nursing Center
     Glens Falls Hospital
     H & L Rubin Dialysis Centers
     High Peaks Hospice and Palliative Care, Inc.
     Hoosick Falls Health Center
     Hudson Headwaters Health Network
     Kingsway Arms Nursing Center
     MVP Health Care
     Pleasant Valley
     Resurrection Nursing Home
     Saratoga Care Nursing Home
     Saratoga County Public Health
     Saratoga Hospital
     Seton Health/St. Mary's Hospital
     Seton Health at Schuyler Ridge
     Seton Home Health Care
     The Avenue/Capital Living and Rehabilitation Centres
     The Dutch Manor/Capital Living and Rehabilitation Centres
     The Springs/Capital Living and Rehabilitation Centres
     The Stanton/Capital Living and Rehabilitation Centres
     Van Rensselaer Manor Nursing Facility
     VNSA of Schenectady and Saratoga
     Warren County Public Health
     Washington County Public Health
     Wesley Health Care Center Inc.
     The Orchard Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre
     Glens Falls Dialysis Center
     Ellis Residential & Rehab Center
     Healthcare Information Xchange of New York

This material was prepared by IPRO, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for New York State, under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents do not necessarily reflect CMS policy. 9SOW-NY-THM7.2-09-13

SOURCE IPRO

RELATED LINKS
http://www.ipro.org