Why Employers Care: View the Video*

• At any given time, about one in every 20 patients has an infection related to their hospital care.
• Nearly one in five Medicare patients discharged from the hospital is readmitted within 30 days; that's about 2.6 million seniors at a cost of over $26 billion every year.

Partnership for Patients: New National Patient Safety Initiative

The Obama Administration launched the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs on April 12, 2011. The Partnership brings together leaders from major hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, and patient advocates in a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly.

The two goals of the Partnership for Patients are to:

• Keep patients from getting injured or sick. By the end of 2013, preventable hospital-acquired conditions would decrease by 40% compared to 2010.
• Help patients heal without complication. By the end of 2013, preventable complications during transition from one care setting to another would decrease so that all hospital readmissions would be reduced by 20% compared to 2010.

What Employers Can Do

• Use market-based incentives, that may include payments, to promote improvements in safety and other dimensions of quality and value;
• Work with other private payers, states and the federal government to align our efforts to measure performance on quality and safety - so that patients and clinicians have the best possible information and the burden on hospitals and other providers is minimized; and
• Share information with our employees, members or beneficiaries so they can engage as active partners in getting better, safer care.

The Business Group has compiled several tools and resources to help employers, including:

A Toolkit for Action: Ensuring Patient Safety Across Health Care

Helping Employees Choose the Right Hospital: A Toolkit to Facilitate Effective Communication

Solutions Online - Patient safety

National Business Group on Health's Position Statement on Quality and Safety

For more information on our work in patient safety, please contact patientsafety@businessgrouphealth.org.

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