The Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) Hospital Engagement Network (HEN) has been awarded $4.5 million from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to further expand its work to enhance patient safety. The award was effective Sept. 26, 2013. 

The MHA Hospital Engagement Network competed successfully as a hospital engagement network in the federal Partnership for Patients program to be chosen for this work. The MHA HEN is one of six hospital engagement networks across the country to be selected for this program. The Leading Edge Advanced Practice Topics (LEAPT) funding will allow Minnesota hospitals to create tested strategies to measure and improve outcomes for patients. Specifically, hospitals will develop and share with hospitals nationally significant advances in the following areas:

• Severe sepsis (a rapid onset of organ dysfunction caused by an overwhelming immune response to infection) and septic shock (a form of severe sepsis accompanied by a life-threatening decrease in blood pressure).
• Clostridium difficile (C.diff), a bacterial infection that can be acquired during hospitalization and after treatment of an unrelated infection with antibiotics. C.diff infection leads to a wide range of symptoms from diarrhea to life-threatening colon inflammation, and primarily occurs in older adults in hospitals.
• Iatrogenic delirium, a rapid decline in cognitive function, which results in temporary, but severe confusion and disorientation as a result of medical treatment.
• Creating a hospital culture of safety that fully integrates patient and worker safety.
• Expanding the reduction of hospital acquired conditions and readmissions across the health care community, including: collaborating with long-term care, clinics, the community and others to prevent falls and falls with injury across all settings; improving transitions of care through comprehensive medication therapy management; engaging medical school residents in meaningful quality improvement and patient safety efforts; and engaging patients as partners in the prevention of harm. 

The Partnership for Patients program was created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2011 to help improve the quality, safety and affordability of health care for allAmericans with the goal to:

• Decrease preventable hospital acquired conditions by 40 percent.
• Decrease hospital 30-day readmissions by 20 percent.

MHA has helped 112 participating hospitals identify, document, refine and share best practices to prevent and reduce:

• Adverse drug events (ADE)
• Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI)
• Central-line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSI)
• Injuries from falls and immobility
• Obstetrical adverse events, including the reduction of early elective deliveries (EEDs)
• Pressure ulcers
• Readmissions
• Surgical site infections
• Venous thromboembolism (VTE)
• Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP)

“Being selected for this initiative is a testament to the innovative work going on in Minnesota hospitals to continuously improve patient care,” said Lawrence Massa, president and chief executive officer, Minnesota Hospital Association. “Participation in this program will help ensure that Minnesota hospitals will continue to be at the forefront of the nation in delivering safe, high-quality care to patients.” 

The following hospitals and health systems will serve as mentor and/or exploratory hospitals for the LEAPT contract. These hospitals will help test and refine best practices that will be spread to hospitals across the state:

• Appleton Area Health Services
• Avera Health/Avera E. Care
• Avera Marshal Regional Medical Center
• Buffalo Hospital
• CentraCare Health – Long Prairie
• CentraCare Health – Melrose
• CentraCare Health – Monticello
• Grand Itasca Clinic and Hospital, Grand Rapids
• HealthEast Care System, St. Paul
• Maple Grove Hospital
• Mille Lacs Health System, Onamia
• Minnesota Valley Health Center, Le Sueur
• New Ulm Medical Center
• Ortonville Area Health Services
• Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital, St. Louis Park
• Redwood Area Hospital, Redwood Falls
• Rice Memorial Hospital, Willmar
• Ridgeview Medical Center, Waconia
• Sanford Jackson Medical Center
• St. Cloud Hospital
• Tri-County Hospital, Wadena
• United Hospital, St. Paul
• University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, Minneapolis
• Windom Area Hospital

The MHA HEN will subcontract with several organizations to harness their expertise in particular topic areas including: the University of Minnesota-College of Pharmacy Residency Program, the University of Minnesota Medical School, and the Minnesota Alliance for Patient Safety. 

Multiple independent quality organizations consistently rank Minnesota among the top states in the nation for patient safety and quality of care. The federal Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s (AHRQ) ranks Minnesota as having the best overall health care quality in the nation.The Minnesota Hospital Association, with its members and partners, is involved in a number of actions to reach for even higher levels of performance, including: a nation-leading adverse health events reporting system; multiple patient safety calls to action; and development of new methods of measuring quality. For more information, go to: www.mnhospitals.org/patient-safety. 

The Minnesota Hospital Association represents 144 hospitals and health systems, which employ more than 113,000 people, provide quality care for patients and meet the needs of our communities.