Hospitals tasked with meeting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services(CMS) healthcare-associated infection (HAI) reporting
requirements are making progress, according to a Premier
healthcare alliance survey.
“While not included in this IPPS rule, healthcare reform legislation
also imposes payment penalties for certain hospital-acquired infections
as part of value-based
purchasing (VBP), and a separate penalty for hospital-acquired
conditions”
By January 2011, as outlined in the FY 2011 final rule, Medicare will
require all hospitals participating in the Inpatient Prospective Payment
System (IPPS) to:
Enroll in the Center for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) National
Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN);
Collect and report data on specific central line-associated
bloodstream infections (CLABSIs).
Those that do not meet these requirements by January 2011 and do not
submit data to CDC/NHSN will be subject to a two percentage point
reduction in their Medicare inpatient annual payment update for FY 2013.
According to a survey of participants on Premiers August
25 Advisor Live teleconference, Using
NHSN for new CMS requirements,
Nearly 60 percent of respondents are already enrolled in the NHSN;
Forty-one percent of respondents are both enrolled in NHSN and
currently submitting CLABSI data.
More than 2,300 healthcare representatives joined the teleconference,
which featured Premiers Danielle Lloyd, senior director for
Reimbursement Policy, and Daniel Pollock, M.D., Surveillance branch
chief, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion Centers for the CDC,
discussing the use of NHSN to meet the new CMS reporting requirements
for CLABSIs.
According to Lloyd, the final Medicare policies incorporate numerous
quality measures that hospitals should understand to avoid payment cuts.
The ability to focus on evidence-based care, compare against others,
work with physicians, make changes in performance and use appropriate
coding will help hospitals steer clear of these cuts while advancing
patient safety and the quality of care they provide.
The CDC says there are approximately 3,000 hospitals registered with
NHSN, while CMS data shows nearly 3,500 hospitals are currently subject
to the pay for reporting requirements.
Surgical site infections reporting begins in 2012 with associated
payment impact effective in 2014. Additional measures will likely be
introduced in the future.
When asked what poses the greatest challenge for CLABSI reporting, of
the nearly 1,000 respondents:
44 percent said experience and proficiency in using NHSN;
41 percent said enrolling in NHSN by January 2011;
16 percent said collecting denominator data.
While not included in this IPPS rule, healthcare reform legislation
also imposes payment penalties for certain hospital-acquired infections
as part of value-based
purchasing (VBP), and a separate penalty for hospital-acquired
conditions, said Salah S. Qutaishat, Ph.D., director of Surveillance
and Epidemiology at Premier. It is imperative that hospitals focus on
these infections and get rates as close to zero as possible, as
performance data collected through NHSN could be incorporated into the
reform policies in the future, and NHSN data will be made public on CMS
Hospital Compare website.
The CDC and Premier announced in May a
joint research initiative to test new technologies for predicting
incidents of CLASBIs, as well as to automate the reporting of these
adverse events to the NHSN.
Premier is one of the automated surveillance system vendors capable of
supporting uploading of electronic HAI data to the NHSN. Premier also
assists with NHSN enrollment, set-up and education for providers that
have not enrolled, as well as training programs on data submission for
clinicians.
Premiers SafetySurveillor has helped providers reduce infection rates
leading to decreases
in mortality and length of stay for infection cases while reducing costs;
reduction
in urinary tract infections; quicker
intervention with appropriate drug therapy for critical patients;
and reduced costs through the elimination
of unnecessary MRSA screening for ICU patients.
About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award recipient
Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,400 U.S.
hospitals and nearly 70,000 other healthcare sites working together to
achieve high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by not-for-profit
hospitals, Premier maintains the nations most comprehensive repository
of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading
healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver
measurable improvements in care, Premier works with the Centers for
Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdoms National Health
Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in
Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has offices in San Diego, Philadelphia and
Washington. http://www.premierinc.com

Source: Business Wire