Join the Partnership

The Partnership for Patients brings together leaders of major hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, and patient advocates along with state and federal governments in a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly.

The two goals of this new partnership are:

• Keeping patients from getting injured or sicker. Accidents happen, and too often patients in hospitals experience preventable harms. The initiative seeks to increase efforts to prevent harm to patients in hospitals. By the end of 2013, preventable hospital-acquired conditions would decrease by 40% compared to 2010. 
• Helping patients heal without complication. Patients are often at their most vulnerable when leaving the hospital to continue healing at home, in an assisted living facility, or in another care setting. The initiative seeks to improve continuity and effectiveness of care during transitions from one care setting to another and decrease preventable hospital readmissions within 30 days of discharge. By the end of 2013, preventable complications during a transition from one care setting to another would be decreased so that all hospital readmissions would be reduced by 20% compared to 2010. 

Achieving these goals will save lives and prevent injuries to millions of Americans, and has the potential to save up to $35 billion dollars across the health care system, including up to $10 billion in Medicare savings, over the next three years.  Over the next ten years, it could reduce costs to Medicare by about $50 billion and result in billions more in Medicaid savings.  This will help put our nation on the path toward a more sustainable health care system.

Our Partnership Commitment Pledge

These goals can be achieved only with a broad and deep commitment from entities across the nation. The federal government, hospitals, clinicians, patients, employers, unions, health plans, states, and others join together to pledge our support to the goals of the Partnership for Patients initiative to achieve a safer, higher quality health care system for all Americans. We support the aims of improving care, improving people’s health, and reducing the costs of care by improving quality. 

The participants in the Partnership for Patients pledge to join in a shared effort to save thousands of lives, stop millions of injuries, and take important steps toward a more dependable and affordable health care system. 

Hospitals 

As the providers of hospital-based care to patients in need, we pledge to work to attain the goals of this initiative and commit to building on work already underway to achieve safe, high quality care by utilizing tools and processes that improve safety for patients.  We pledge to:

• Make achieving the goals of harm reduction and improved care transitions to reduce readmissions a priority of our Board of Directors, senior leaders, clinicians, and staff; 
• Support clinicians and staff working for and with us and engage patients and families in order to make care safer, improve communication, and increase coordination by implementing proven systems and processes; and
• Learn from and share with others our experiences with making care safer and more coordinated.

Clinicians and Other Care Providers 

As professionals who have dedicated our lives to caring for patients, families, and communities -- we support the goals of this Initiative and commit to building on work already underway to achieve safe, high quality care by utilizing tools and processes that seek to improve safety and continuity for patients. We pledge to:

• Work to redesign activities across clinical settings to reduce harm, reduce preventable readmissions, and improve care transitions;
• Engage with patients and families to implement practices that foster more patient-centered care that improves safety, communication, and care coordination; and
• Learn from and share with others our experiences with making care safer and more coordinated.

Consumer, Community and Patient Organizations 

As those who rely on hospitals, clinicians and other providers to keep us well, we commit to working with them to expand the reach of this Initiative and actively engage patients, family caregivers, and consumers in helping to achieve success.  We pledge to:

• Raise public awareness and educate patients, families, and consumers about the importance of making care safer and better coordinated; 
• Develop and provide information, tools, resources, and technical assistance to help patients, families, and consumers effectively engage with their providers in these activities; and 
• Encourage providers to work in partnership with patients, families, and consumers to implement practices that foster more patient-centered care that improves safety, communication, and care coordination.

Employers, Unions, Health Plans and States 

As those who purchase health care on behalf of American consumers and provide information to help support them in their efforts to get better care we pledge to:

• Use market-based incentives, that may include payments, to promote improvements in safety and other dimensions of quality and value;
• Work with other private payers, states and the federal government to align our efforts to measure performance on quality and safety – so that patients and clinicians have the best possible information and the burden on hospitals and other providers is minimized; and
• Share information with our employees, members or beneficiaries so they can engage as active partners in getting better, safer care.

Other Organizations 

The Federal Government  

The federal government pledges to work to attain the goals of the Partnership for Patients initiative by building on work already underway and supporting local initiatives to improve the quality of care.  We pledge to:

• Provide resources for technical support to physicians, nurses, and other clinicians working in and out of hospitals to test large scale implementation of care delivery models that make patient care safer and to support effective transitions of patients from hospitals to other settings.  We will customize these tools to meet the local needs of different settings and clinicians;
• Develop better measures of the quality and safety of care patients receive to help support hospital efforts to improve care, and provide better information to help inform consumers and employers in their decision-making.  We will develop these measures through public processes with a goal of reducing burden on providers while collecting the best information possible;
• Seek to learn from, and be a partner with, the private sector in using incentives to drive improvements in health care safety, quality, and value.  We will encourage innovations, while recognizing that the payment and other terms entered into between hospitals and other providers and private payers are matters of individual contract and negotiation; and 
• Assure that where the federal government is a direct provider of care – such as through the Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service – we will implement the tools that are proven to reduce hospital acquired conditions and facilitate better care transitions.

Posted on: April 12, 2011