Partnership for Patients

The Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs is a new public-private partnership that will help improve the quality, safety and affordability of health care for all Americans.

Using as much as $1 billion in new funding provided by the Affordable Care Act and leveraging a number of ongoing programs, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will work with a wide variety of public and private partners to achieve the two core goals of this partnership – keeping patients from getting injured or sicker in the health care system and helping patients heal without complication by improving transitions from acute-care hospitals to other care settings, like home or a skilled nursing facility.

The two goals of this new partnership are to:

1. Keep patients from getting injured or sicker

2. Help patients heal without complication.

ElderCare Resource Center has joined!

As professionals who have dedicated our lives to caring for patients, families, and communities — we support the goals of this Initiative and commit to building on work already underway to achieve safe, high quality care by utilizing tools and processes that seek to improve safety and continuity for patients.

We pledge to:

1. Work to redesign activities across clinical settings to reduce harm, reduce preventable readmissions, and improve care transitions;

2. Engage with patients and families to implement practices that foster more patient-centered care that improves safety, communication, and care coordination; and

3. Learn from and share with others our experiences with making care safer and more coordinated.

And

As those who rely on hospitals, clinicians and other providers to keep us well, we commit to working with them to expand the reach of this Initiative and actively engage patients, family caregivers, and consumers in helping to achieve success.

We pledge to:

1. Raise public awareness and educate patients, families, and consumers about the importance of making care safer and better coordinated;

2. Develop and provide information, tools, resources, and technical assistance to help patients, families, and consumers effectively engage with their providers in these activities; and

3. Encourage providers to work in partnership with patients, families, and consumers to implement practices that foster more patient-centered care that improves safety, communication, and care coordination.

For more information on Partnership for Patients, visit

http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/partnership04122011a.html