Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association Holds Forum to Explore Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality I...(er BCBSA -- Richard Norling president...),Health

-- Richard Norling, president and chief executive officer, Premier Inc.

-- Terry Kellogg, executive vice president, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of

Alabama

-- Karen Frush, MD, chief patient safety officer, Duke University Health

System

-- Sam Nussbaum, MD, executive vice president and chief medical officer,

WellPoint, Inc.

Building on the momentum of Premier's Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (HQID) pay-for-performance project with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and IHI's 5 Million Lives Campaign, Premier and healthcare leaders from across the country recently launched the QUEST project to improve patient safety and quality in the nation's hospitals while safely reducing healthcare costs. Approximately 100 hospitals will participate in QUEST, which will feature an advisory panel that includes BCBSA and CMS.

"The success of the HQID project led us to believe that similar principles -- clearly defined performance measures, incentives for high performance, transparency, sharing of best practices - can accelerate improvement in other aspects of hospital performance," said Richard A. Norling, Premier's president and CEO. "We are thrilled to collaborate with healthcare leaders at IHI, CMS and BCBSA in our efforts to help hospitals reliably deliver the most efficient, effective and caring hospital experience for each patient."

The Pediatric Rapid Response Team at Duke University Health System worked collaboratively with care teams from inpatient areas to develop strategies, implement the rapid response system, and review performance indicators regularly to determine the program's efficacy. Clinical outcomes included a 65 percent relative risk reduction in the number of non-pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) cardiac arrests, a 56 percent reduction in deaths from the non-PICU cardiac arrests, and a 25 percent reduction in non-PICU inpatient deaths.

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