Partnership for Patients

Here's the story. Now, here's the explanation.

So, the Obama administration launches this thing called "Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs." The plan is to make the safety, quality and affordability of health care better by banding together pretty much any kind of higher-up in the home health care field, including, but not limited to, employers, doctors, and leaders of major hospitals. Apparently, it's supposed to save us (as a country, not each of us, of course) $35 billion, as well as 60,000 lives.

How? Well, glad you asked.

1. Everyone is going to make sure you or your loved one don't get injured or sicker while you're in the hospital. "By the end of 2013, preventable hospital-acquired conditions would decrease by 40% compared to 2010.  Achieving this goal would mean approximately 1.8 million fewer injuries to patients, with more than 60,000 lives saved over the next three years," the story states.

2. They will reduce the amount of hospital readmissions by 20% by lessening the number of preventable complications that come up during the transfer from hospital to home.

The source goes on to list a few scary facts that show us how important this plan really is:

• A study published in April, 2011 in the journal Health Affairs found that on average, 1 in 3 patients admitted into a hospital suffer a medical error or adverse event – nearly 10 times greater than previously believed.
• On any given day, about 1 in every 20 patients is affected by an infection related to hospital care.
• On average, 1 in 7 Medicare beneficiaries is harmed in the course of care, costing the government an estimated $4.4 billion every year.
• Nearly 1 in 5 Medicare patients discharged from the hospital is readmitted within 30 days – that’s approximately 2.6 million seniors at a cost of over $26 billion every year.

So, basically, everyone's trying to stop you or the ones you love from becoming one of the above statistics. I'd say that's a pretty good thing, wouldn't you?

How's it all gonna work? Who's paying for it? Well, using up to $1 billion from the Affordable Care Act, the CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) will dedicate money to researching and testing accident prevention in hospitals, but also for awarding community-based organizations who help in the transition from hospital to home. So yes, while this does use a good billion dollars to get going, it should save us about 35 times that amount in the long run, along with saving lives. Who can put a price on that?