Quality of Care

Two Atlanta gatherings Monday showed that health care isn’t waiting around for whatever happens to the 2010 reform law.

Gov. Nathan Deal’s committee on health exchanges met at the state Capitol for introductions and background on their task.

The federal law, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, requires states to have health exchanges running in January 2014. That’s when the law — if it’s upheld in the courts — is to be fully implemented. If Georgia or other states don’t create their own exchange mechanisms by then, the law says the federal government will run the operation in those states.

Health exchanges are online shopping malls where individuals can compare and buy insurance. Their purpose is to greatly enhance the insurance-buying power of individual consumers and employees of small businesses.

Ryan Teague, deputy executive counsel for the governor, said the health reform law is ‘’a heavyhanded approach to expanding Medicaid.’’ But he told the exchange committee that however undesirable the Affordable Care Act may be, ”we have to deal with reality’’ and not ignore the law’s existence.

The committee, Teague said, will have the opportunity to fashion something that “we would have done on our own.’’ full story

Patient safety has been a top-shelf theme in health care for years.

But alarming data continue to demonstrate potential dangers of a health care experience. The safety numbers include:

• A study published in the journal Health Affairs in April found that on average, one in three patients admitted to a hospital suffers a medical error or adverse event.
• An estimated 1.7 million Americans annually suffer an infection acquired in a hospital, leading to about 100,000 deaths per year.
• On average, one in seven Medicare beneficiaries is harmed during the course of care, which costs the federal government an estimated $4.4 billion a year.

A public-private partnership led by the Obama administration aims to reduce medical errors and the enormous costs associated with them.

The Partnership for Patients proposes to unite hospital systems, employers, insurers, medical providers and patients to help make the health care system safer. The goals: to lower hospital-acquired conditions by 40 percent in three years, saving 60,000 lives; and to reduce patient readmissions to hospitals by 20 percent over that same time period.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the health reform law, is investing $1 billion in the safety initiative.

The health system falls short on safety  “far too often, for too many patients,’’ Anton Gunn, regional director of HHS, said at an Atlanta event Tuesday describing the initiative. Providing medical services safely, he added, ‘’is a lot cheaper than doing it wrong in the first place.’’

HHS says more 500 hospitals, along with physicians, nurses groups, consumer groups and employers have pledged their support. Companies including Walmart, IBM, Intel, and Johnson & Johnson have joined. full story