Health Care Excel

TERRE HAUTE, Ind.—Health Care Excel, the Indiana Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO), will present at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) 2011 QualityNet Conference in December.

Kathy Hybarger, RN, MSN, Senior Project Lead for Nursing Homes will join partners to present Using the Advancing Excellence (AE) Campaign to Improve Critical Access Nursing Homes. The presentation will provide insight on results of Critical Access Nursing Home Pilot projects that took place in Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, and Ohio, addressing disparities in nursing homes.

The pilots were centered around The AE in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign that was established in 2006 by a volunteer group of more than 25 stakeholder organizations to help nursing homes improve the quality of care and life they provide to residents. More than 6,200 nursing homes, 42% of all nursing homes in the United States, have joined the campaign.  Much of the campaign’s work reaches individual nursing homes through groups of stakeholders within each state, called LANEs (Local Area Networks of Excellence).

The CMS conference will focus on an “All Teach, All Learn” experience where CMS will host QIOs, End Stage Renal Disease Networks, those working to reduce disparities in health care, and others working in health information technology around effective practices for achieving the CMS Three Part Aim: Better Health for the Population, Better Care for Individuals, and Lower Cost through Improvement.

Health Care Excel assists Indiana nursing homes to reduce health care acquired conditions, such as pressure ulcers and physical restraints in support of the CMS Three Part Aim. For more information, go to www.hce.org.

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This material was prepared by Health Care Excel, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Indiana, under contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents presented do not necessarily reflect CMS policy. 10SOW-IN-INDPAT-11-011 10/28/11