For over a decade, Great Plains Quality Innovation Network has proudly served as the Medicare QIN-QIO for North Dakota and South Dakota. Our current Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) 12th Statement of Work (SOW) contract will end on Thursday, November 7, 2024.
When we started this scope, we held a strategic session outlining what success would look like – the heart of our mission was the value of partnerships. On behalf of Great Plains QIN, we are so grateful for your commitment and willingness to learn alongside us and for ‘showing up’ to learn, grow and improve the quality of care for those we serve. We could not have experienced the successes and gains without the commitment and partnership of the healthcare community. It is difficult to summarize the accomplishments of the program and our partners over the last five years as there are many; however, we highlighted a few:
- Met nearly two-thirds of the 12th SOW final quality measure targets set by CMS in the areas of opioids, patient safety, chronic disease, care coordination, COVID measures, immunizations, and infection control training
- Lowered 30-day hospital readmissions for Medicare beneficiaries by 15.8%
- Reduced hospital utilization for Medicare beneficiaries by 7.8%
- Consistently led the nation in COVID-19 vaccinations for our nursing home residents
Next Steps/Future of the QIN-QIO Program
CMS released a new, five-year, quality improvement contract for the work we have been doing together. Many of the quality improvement initiatives with this new work will be related to activities you already know, plus a focus on some new ones. Working with acute care hospitals, rural and critical access hospitals, nursing homes and outpatient clinical practices, the goal of the new contract is to meet providers and practitioners where they are with their quality improvement activities, with a focus on the following initiatives:
- Preventing and better managing chronic disease, including diabetes, hypertension and chronic kidney disease with access to community resources and education.
- Continuing to improve hospitals and nursing home stays with reduced health care acquired infections, adverse drugs events and falls.
- Improving support and screening for depressive symptoms and substance use disorders and better managing chronic pain.
- Improving care coordination across setting with reducing readmission and avoidable emergency room visits.
- Developing patient and family advisory councils to improve engagement of beneficiaries and families as active partners in care and quality.
- Supporting providers and practitioners’ quality management structure, being attentive to emergency preparedness, cybersecurity, climate change, workforce planning and supply chains and shortages.
We recently announced our interest to CMS to bid on the Midwest Region for the 13th Statement of Work in partnership with Comagine Health. For more information, access the blog post. CMS has yet to award QIN-QIO contractors for this next scope.
If you have any questions about this process, please send your inquiry to CMSQINQIOProgram@cms.hhs.gov. Additional information about the 13th Scope of Work will be added on this CMS Web page when available.
On Behalf of our Team
“Over the past year, myself and several family members have had multiple encounters with small and large health systems. While the vast majority of care we received was excellent, navigating through the healthcare system to ensure transfer of information between providers, healthcare organizations, and payors was difficult even for seasoned healthcare professionals, especially when not feeling at your optimum self due to an accident or illness. Care coordination to enhance patient safety and health literacy is a huge undertaking with many entry points that can only be tackled by organizations, patients, and families working together to improve communication in hand offs and continued care. One of things I’m most proud of during the past five years is how the Great Plains QIN team facilitated connections in communities throughout North Dakota and South Dakota to improve care to persons with Medicare in areas, such as cardiac rehab, vaccinations, readmissions, adverse drug events, and sepsis,” shared Krystal Hays, DNP, RN, CPHQ, RAC-CT.
“I have enjoyed working with nursing homes in North Dakota and South Dakota. I was able to support nursing facilities through COVID-19 outbreaks and vaccinations throughout the pandemic. I met with with the nursing facility and helped navigate COVID-19 outbreaks and worked with the nursing facility to identify and implement infection control processes for improvement. Throughout a six-week period, I was able to work closely with a nursing facility to complete audits and sets goals for improvement. It is extremely rewarding to see the nursing homes reach their goals and sustain them. Nursing homes teams are working so hard to keep their residents safe; often times, it is simply a little tweak to one of their processes that brings compliance up to 100%. It is also exciting to see leadership praise their staff for maintaining compliance and keeping residents safe and I feel so fortunate to have been a part of it,” added Stephanie Meduna, RN, BSN.
We anxiously await information on the next steps of the QIN-QIO program; we will share information as soon as it is available. In the meantime, we want to end this chapter with a sincere ‘thank you’.