PrintPrintHealth Sciences South Carolina, the S.C. Hospital Association and the Premier Inc. health care alliance have announced the formation of the S.C. Healthcare Quality Trust, a voluntary, statewide hospital and research university partnership.
Staff Report
Published Feb. 4, 2009
Health Sciences South Carolina, the S.C. Hospital Association and the Premier Inc. health care alliance have announced the formation of the S.C. Healthcare Quality Trust, a voluntary, statewide hospital and research university partnership.
The collaborative will employ research to identify causes of, and solutions to, preventable infections and then will share the results with all 65 of the state’s acute-care hospitals. The three partners will invest more than $1.7 million over three years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 1.7 million infections occur each year in America’s hospitals. Those infections cost the nation 99,000 lives and $6.2 billion in additional health care expenses each year, the CDC estimates.
Premier Inc. data from 16 S.C. hospitals representing 42% of the state’s annual discharges indicate the new collaborative could save the state’s hospitals as much as $40 million a year and reduce S.C. patients’ length of stay by up to 24,000 days.
Health Sciences South Carolina President and CEO Jay Moskowitz said the collaborative will test solutions in the state’s four largest health systems, which treat about 30% of all patients.
The effort includes the state’s research universities — Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina — as well as all of the state’s hospitals.
“Hospital-acquired infections are a serious threat to patient health and safety in all hospitals, and they add significantly to the cost of care,” said Thornton Kirby, president and CEO of the S.C. Hospital Association. “South Carolina hospitals are not immune to this problem, but they are working on all fronts to identify and eradicate preventable infections.”
In 2006, the association worked with legislators on the state’s Hospital Infections Disclosure Act, which requires hospitals to report certain categories of infections to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. Last year, DHEC published preliminary numbers on its Web site. The association also has a public Web site that provides hospital-specific performance data.
How the trust will work
The trust will create an information-sharing portal to allow all S.C. hospitals to research the causes of health care-associated infections and to identify and promote processes for prevention. Hospitals will be able to track their improvement against state and national benchmarks via the Performance Improvement Portal, Premier’s network of more than 1,500 health care experts nationwide.
“Through the South Carolina Healthcare Quality Trust, we are developing an approach to eliminating health care-associated infections using evidence-based best practices,” said Susan DeVore, COO of Premier. “By measuring performance against state and national benchmarks, we will work to become a national model for health care quality improvement.”
Who’s involved
The Center for Healthcare Quality, a Center of Economic Excellence supported by Health Sciences South Carolina, will lead the research efforts.
The state’s four largest health systems and Health Sciences South Carolina and S.C. Hospital Association members — Greenville Hospital System, MUSC Health, Palmetto Health and Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System — will conduct research and test new processes. The association will support the rollout to its member hospitals.
The efforts of Health Sciences South Carolina and the S.C. Hospital Association are supported by The Duke Endowment, a Charlotte-based philanthropic organization committed to the improvement of health care, among other things, in the Carolinas.
Print