HPCI News: A Big Win for Patients, Consumers and Purchasers
To: Members and selected others
In May, CMS announced to
Leapfrog they planned to discontinue public reporting of
eight of the Hospital Acquired Condition (HAC) measures,
mostly never events such as objects left in after surgery.
Leapfrog members and friends like all of you have been
active this summer in addressing this issue and planning
strategies to continue to pressure CMS to restore this
public reporting. For instance, Leapfrog Board Member David
Goldhill did an
online blog for Time that I encourage you to read. Our
senior director of hospital ratings, Missy Danforth, and her
team have been highly determined to work this out and make
sure no matter what the public has access to this
information about their hospitals. USA Today’s able
investigative reporter Jayne O’Donnell did a
front page story about this.
Our commitment and
determination has succeeded. CMS has reversed its earlier
decision and confirmed they will now report the HACs. This
isn’t perfection, since the results won’t be on Hospital
Compare and, thus, easily accessible by the public. But they
appear on a separate public database on the CMS website,
which Leapfrog and others will use to make the information
available to the public. No mistake about it, this is a
major victory for purchasers and consumers—and the American
public. It was announced this weekend, again in
USA Today.
Paul M. Pietzsch, MPH
HPCI - IHBA Office
4430 Ashley Park Drive
West Des Moines, Iowa 50265
(515) 778-6300