McLean, VA: The American Health Quality Association (AHQA) applauds Congressman Ron Kind (D-WI), Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI), Congressman Dan Kildee (D-MI), and Congressman Michael Burgess (R-TX) for introducing the Infection Control Training and Support Act. This legislation will reestablish critical technical assistance resources for nursing homes and other health care providers to improve the quality of care they deliver to patients, reduce the rate of COVID-19 infection, and save lives.
COVID-19 has hit vulnerable populations in nursing homes especially hard. Nursing homes face innumerable challenges to protect their residents from infectious disease, and they need to be armed with resources commensurate to the COVID-19 threat. This legislation would activate the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) program to provide nursing homes with independent clinical expertise to help them navigate the unique challenges of this pandemic. The QIN-QIO program is the only shovel-ready infrastructure that can achieve local interventions at a national scale. QIOs are independent organizations who are unaffiliated with any health care provider, include health care consumers on their board and have a long history of success improving care delivery. This strategic deployment of existing resources to improve infection control and prevention will pay dividends on the national COVID recovery and future infectious disease responses.
AHQA strongly supports the inclusion of these resources in the next Coronavirus bill and is deeply appreciative of inclusion in the House-passed HEROES Act. “The time is now, we need to deploy the QIN-QIO Program to do what it was designed to do- to be the boots on the ground to improve the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries. It is critical that the QIN-QIO program be activated to support the public health response to COVID-19, and we thank our Congressional champions for recognizing this need and taking action,” said Alison Teitelbaum, AHQA Executive Director.
Since 1984 the American Health Quality Association (AHQA) has represented Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) and other professionals working to improve health care quality and patient safety. AHQA is an educational, not-for-profit national membership association dedicated to promoting and facilitating fundamental change that improves the quality of health care in America