Published: May 30, 2012
Sparrow Hospital is serving as a model for the rest of the country in federal efforts to support Medicare patients at high-risk of being readmitted to the hospital as they transition to home or other health care settings.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has debuted a training video featuring portions filmed at Sparrow Hospital. The video is being used to promote successful efforts of CMS's Community-based Care Transitions Program (CCTP).
"The success we've had with heart failure management and improving the safety of discharge and decreasing readmissions has let to multiple other health care systems around the county adopting our practices," said Dr. James Haering, D.O., Medical Director for Sparrow Hospitalist Service.
Sparrow is not a CCTP participant. However, Haering was selected to serve as faculty for the learning collaborative arm of the program due to success demonstrated during a pilot program.
The video filmed inside Sparrow recreates the experience of a Sparrow Patient who undergoes heart surgery and is introduced to the "Heart Failure Knowledge Passport" during follow-up care. The Heart Failure Passport is an educational toolkit designed by a consortium of 20 health care providers in the Lansing area.
The program is aimed at reducing heart failure hospital readmission rates by coordinating seamless transition across all health care settings. The three-year effort has resulted in a 10 percent drop in readmissions.
Sparrow TCI and the Sparrow Heart and Vascular Center offer mid-Michigan's leading heart team, the finest clinicians and nurses, and the most advanced facilities. Our Physicians are leaders in groundbreaking cardiac research, having participated in hundreds of clinical trials with organizations throughout the nation. For more information, visit www.sparrow.org/heart-center.
The federal Community-based Care Transitions Program (CCTP) tests models for improving care transitions from the hospital to other settings and reducing readmissions for high-risk Medicare beneficiaries. The goal is to improve transitions of beneficiaries from the inpatient hospital setting to other care settings, to improve quality of care, to reduce readmissions for high risk beneficiaries, and to document measurable savings to the Medicare program.