Program Priorities

IPRO offers technical assistance to help New York State healthcare providers build the capacity to sustain and expand quality improvement activities. This assistance includes support for quality improvement techniques like root cause analysis, intra-team communication, clinical data collection, intervention design and deployment and statistical analysis. As directed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), IPRO's current work with New York State providers focuses on:

• Improving Individual Patient Care. IPRO is working with New York State hospitals, nursing homes, and pharmacists to support adoption of processes that will save lives and lower costs.
  • Patient safety initiatives in hospitals will reduce central line bloodstream infections by implementing the Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program (CUSP), then expand to encompass catheter-associated urinary tract infections, Clostridium difficile and surgical site infections. IPRO will also provide all Medicare-participating hospitals with technical assistance in reporting inpatient and outpatient quality data to CMS.
  • In nursing homes, our work initially targets eliminating pressure ulcers and the use of physical restraints, then will evolve to address other challenges for long term care residents, such as falls and catheter-associated urinary tract infections.
  • To decrease adverse drug events, IPRO is bringing together community pharmacists, physicians and facilities in local Patient Safety Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaboratives (PSPCs), following the successful Health Resources and Services Administration model.
    
    
• Improving Health for Populations and Communities. IPRO is supporting New York State practices that want to use their electronic health record system to coordinate preventive services and report related quality measures to CMS. Practices can also participate in a learning network focused on reducing patient risk factors for cardiac disease. IPRO is partnering with New York State's Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center (REC) to promote health IT integration into clinical practice.
  
  
• Integrating Care for Populations and Communities. IPRO is bringing together hospitals, nursing homes, patient advocacy organizations and other stakeholders in community coalitions. Goals are to build capacity for improving care transitions - when a patient moves within or between healthcare settings or home - and to support the coalition's success in obtaining grant funding through Section 3026 of the Affordable Care Act.
  
  
• Promoting Beneficiary and Family Centered Care. IPRO also fulfills CMS' obligation to protect the rights of Medicare beneficiaries in New York State by reviewing complaints about quality and appeals about the denial or discontinuation of health care services.