Medical Team Meeting With Senior Couple In Hospital Room

Safe, smooth and seamless transitions of care across the healthcare continuum have been the focus of quality improvement efforts for quite some time. Making these transitions safer and more effective can have a broad impact by reducing unnecessary readmissions, improving patient satisfaction and lowering healthcare costs.

Great Plains Quality Innovation Network (QIN) has recently released the document, Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF): Shared Best Practices to Reduce Potentially Preventable Readmissions (PPRs), to promote safer care transitions for nursing home residents. The document provides a checklist to guide healthcare professionals through all points of a resident’s stay from the referral to preparing for transfer/discharge.

“Our health systems are highly complex so when residents transition between care settings, the safety of that resident can become an issue. Communication is key to effective care transitions, and we’re excited to offer this SNF Best Practice Resource to our Great Plains QIN providers as a guide to safer practices and improved communication. We also encourage our providers to take part in the First National Care Transitions Day on April 16th to help increase awareness and action of the importance of safe and effective care transitions. We hope many providers in our states will participate in person or virtually.” (See below for registration information.) ~Tammy Baumann, RN, LSSGB, CADDCT, CDP, Quality Improvement Advisor, Great Plains QIN

First Annual National Care Transitions Day
Improved care coordination is high priority topic for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS has declared April 16, 2019, as National Care Transitions Awareness Day (NCTA) to increase awareness and action in the beneficiary and provider communities of the importance of safe and effective care transitions between all settings. To spotlight the awareness day, CMS is hosting the first annual NCTA Day Summit at the CMS Headquarters in Baltimore, MD, with both on-site and virtual participation options available. The deadline to register is April 1, 2019. Click here to register.

Agenda [At a Glance]:
9:00 a.m.   –   Welcome and Opening Session
9:50 a.m.   –   Care Transitions and Medicare Billing Codes
10:30 a.m. –   Payment and Value Based Outcomes: CMS in Action
11:00 a.m. –   Overview of Complex Discharges
11:20 a.m. –   Grand Rounds
1:45 p.m.   –   Care Transition Best Practices Spotlight
2:30 p.m.   –   Federal Partners Work in Care Transitions
2:50 p.m.   –   Interactive Breakout Sessions and Wrap Up
(Times listed are EDT.)