HealthInsight Quality Innovation Network – Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) will be partnering with Indian Health Service (IHS) hospitals to help them continuously improve quality of care under a new project announced earlier this month. HealthInsight has a history of strategic partnerships that support quality improvement and innovation in hospitals across multiple states and has teamed up with the Oklahoma Foundation for Medical Quality, three QIN-QIOs (Mountain-Pacific Quality Health, Lake Superior and Great Plains) as well as Ironside Consulting, LLC, a Native American owned health care consulting company, for this work. HealthInsight and partners have a strong track record of supporting IHS hospitals within their states to improve care across a variety of projects.
“Our desire to build capacity for quality improvement and achieve excellence in the IHS hospitals is matched by our respect for patient, family and tribal needs, desires and wishes” said HealthInsight President and CEO Marc Bennett.
The overarching goals for the project are to support, build, and if needed, redesign IHS hospital operating infrastructure in order to provide high-quality health care services to Medicare beneficiaries. The contract will focus on leadership, staff development, data acquisition and analytics, clinical standards of care, and quality of care related to the Medicare program. The QIN-QIOs involved cover the majority of the Southwest and Midwest regions including Arizona, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, and Montana, while also covering the sizeable Native Alaskan population. This large geographic partnership will allow the work to affect a majority of the IHS hospitals.
QIOs have been working on behalf of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) since 1984 to help improve health care delivery, safety, and efficiency in every U.S. state and territory through a combination of:
- Improvement collaboratives with local health care providers and provider organizations
- Targeted assistance for individual health care providers
- Direct intervention with Medicare beneficiaries and the health care community
QIOs are private, mostly not-for-profit, organizations staffed by teams of physicians and other health care quality experts. QIOs work directly with health care providers—such as hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, and home health agencies—to ensure the most current, clinically proven techniques and practices are being put in place to deliver the safest and highest quality care.
For more information on the QIN-QIO program, please visit the American Health Quality Association website.
To read the full CMS Press Release, visit the CMS website.