HHS Region IX Launch of Partnership for Patients at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center

Dear Contra Costa Regional Medical and Health Center Community and our valued partners:

Thank you all for joining us today for the Region IX launch of the Obama Administration new initiative, Partnership for Patients. I was honored to introduce our organization and our accomplishments to our local, regional and national leaders. As a public hospital, we play a critical role in our community’s health and we are proud to join hospitals across the nation pledging to improve care and save lives. Here is the Contra Costa Times story that highlights the event.

It is an honor to pledge our support for this ambitious new intiative and to have our achivements recognized by our nations leaders.
Speakers included:

Congressman George Miller,7th District of California
Herb K. Schultz, Regional Director, HHS, Region IX,
David Sayen, CMS Regional Administrator, HHS, and
Joseph McCannon, Senior Advisor, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, HHS

We were joined by consumers, industry representatives, and other key health care stakeholders to highlight the historic reforms of the Affordable Care Act. The new initiative, Partnership for Patients, will help save 60,000 lives by stopping millions of preventable injuries and complications in patient care over the next three years, improving quality and containing costs.

Already, more than 1300 hospitals, as well as physicians and nurses groups, consumer groups, and employers have pledged their commitment to the new initiative.

Our commitment to patient safety has been longstanding. As the people who are working on behalf of our community to continually improve our great health system, you should be proud of the work and the many milestones achieved at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center.

Above are just a few examples of what we have accomplished. You can find them posted on the walls of your work areas. Your achievements are many. You have opened doors that were once closed and welcomed in patients and family members as part of your teams. You have learned to have meaning discussions and shared-decision making with out partners. You have embraced the science of improvement and you are making a difference.

As science and our knowledge of how to create sustainable change continues to advance, we now know we can achieve results that were once thought to be - by hospitals nationwide - out of our reach.

It’s time to challenge ourselves. We can do more.

This isn't an easy conversation for health care providers to have. We go into healthcare to help and heal those in need. It can be difficult to talk about being part of, as Joe McCannon so poignantly stated, a health care system across our nation that is "rife with waste, harm and in urgent need of improvement." Even though this is difficult, we can’t let that deter us. The time has come. The conversation must take place and the Partnership for Patients offers the opportunity to have that dialogue.

At Contra Costa Regional Medical Center and Health Centers we will:
• decrease by 40%, preventable hospital-acquired conditions by the end of 2013
• reduce by 20% hospital readmissions by the end of 2013.

We will look to science and to our partners. Along with others across our region and our nation we will design systems of care that provide the care that our communities want need and deserve free of preventable complications.