We are in the home stretch of HEN 2.0 and working on our goal to achieve Milestone IV, which requires that 80 percent of our participating hospitals achieve an aggregate of 40 percent improvement for at least five of the 11 applicable measures and 20 percent improvement for readmissions. According to HRET, hospitals maintaining a valid zero rate (not just 0/0) from baseline to most recent quarter will be included as “achieved.” CMS will be looking at improvement data for the months of April, May and June in order to evaluate Milestone 4 achievement.
Participating hospitals that achieved our most recent data entry goal received an incentive of one registration to the SDAHO Annual Convention for the quality track education. Questions related to this incentive can be directed to Sheena Thomas.
Pat Teske, RN, MNA, implementation officer, Cynosure Health, will be speaking at the convention. Teske presented on two HEN 2.0 webinars for us and is one of the authors of the book All In: Using Healthcare Collaboratives to Save Lives and Improve Care, which was provided to participating hospitals earlier in the HEN 2.0 project. Her session will be targeted at readmissions and sustainability of quality improvement efforts beyond HEN 2.0.
As HEN 2.0 concludes the end of September, we look forward to our collaboration with Iowa Healthcare Collaborative on the HIIN (Hospital Improvement Innovation Network). CMS has yet to award HIIN contracts, anticipated to occur in late September/early October. At this time, nothing is required of hospitals with the HIIN. We will keep you posted on our efforts as we prepare for this next phase of the national Partnership for Patients initiative.
