Care Coordination
Summary
Hospitals are often expected to coordinate patient care involving multiple providers and facilities. Without effective systems for relaying patient information between settings, a patient's continuity of care can be disrupted, resulting in readmissions, duplicative services, conflicting recommendations, greater potential for error and patient harm and higher overall costs.
Emerging models of care coordination are designed to provide high quality, patient-and family-centered care while controlling overall costs. In addition, national health reform includes several initiatives designed to improve care coordination.
HPOE and HRET offer education resources and programs for hospital leaders pursing improved care coordination, including:
Impatient Care Transitions: Best Practices and Measures of Success
Health Care Reform and Care Coordination
The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains several provisions aimed at improving care coordination, including a value-based purchasing system for hospitals, voluntary pilot projects to test bundled Medicare payments, voluntary pilot programs where qualifying providers-including hospitals-can form Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and share in Medicare cost savings and financial penalties for hospitals with “excessive” readmissions. For more information on the care coordination provisions of the ACA, visit the AHA's Health Reform: Moving Forward web site.
