News Releases

Transitions of Care Collaborative Meeting Focuses on Reducing Heart Failure Readmissions in Northeast Ohio

The Center for Health Affairs and Better Health Greater Cleveland hosted a Transitions of Care collaborative meeting at the Visiting Nurses Association on March 15 as an opportunity for a network of hospitals enrolled in the Robert Wood Johnson's Aligning Forces for Quality Hospital Quality Network  (HQN) to share quality improvement strategies, tools and lessons learned related to Heart Failure Readmissions.

Congestive Heart failure is ranked as #2 among national priorities for preventable readmissions. As a result, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has included this condition in its value-based purchasing program, which was created under health reform and will include reductions in payments to hospitals that have the highest rates of 30-day readmissions for certain conditions.

Payment reductions of 1 percent begin in fiscal year (FY) 2013 and increase gradually until FY 2017 when they reach 2 percent. Hospitals that have the lowest rates of readmissions, on the other hand, will receive reimbursement above the base rate. To address this new CMS initiative, hospital networks need to begin improving heart failure readmissions, by coordinating effective hospital-to-home care.

Guest speakers including Randall D. Cebul, MD, Director, Better Health Greater Cleveland; Ileana Piña, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and epi/Biostats, Case Western Reserve University, Heart Failure/Transplant; and Linda Neiding, MSN, RN, FNP, BC, Project Manager for Transitions of Care, The Center for Health Affairs, encouraged attendees to take a regional approach and begin sharing effective strategies to reduce heart failure readmissions.

Next steps in this collaborative include:

• Engaging the Cleveland hospital network to share strategies and tools to reduce heart failure readmissions.
• Coordinating onsite meetings and teleconferences.
• Recognizing champions and promoting best practices in reducing heart failure readmissions.
• Collecting data and sharing with peers within the network of hospitals.
• Consulting with Dr. Piña for excellence in heart failure transitions of care.

A follow-up collaborative meeting is scheduled for May 5.