Grants totaling $218 million will go to 26 hospitals across the country to help fight healthcare-acquired conditions, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Dec. 13. The grants are intended to help reduce millions of preventable injuries, complications and infections.

As a part of the Partnership for Patients initiative, a nationwide public-private collaboration to improve the quality, safety, and affordability of healthcare for all Americans, the grants will go to 26 state, regional, national or hospital system organizations. As Hospital Engagement Networks, these organizations will help identify solutions – many of them employing health information technology – already working to reduce healthcare acquired conditions, and work to spread them to other hospitals and healthcare providers.

“At some point in our lives many of us are going to need hospital care and we need to be confident that no matter where we live, we’re going to get the best care in the world,” said Sebelius. “The Partnership for Patients is helping the nation’s finest health systems share their knowledge and resources to make sure every hospital knows how to provide all of its patients with the highest quality care.”

The Hospital Engagement Networks’ will be funded with $500 million from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center, which was established by the Affordable Care Act. Hospital Engagement Networks will work to develop learning collaboratives for hospitals and provide a wide array of initiatives and activities to improve patient safety. 

They will be required to conduct intensive training programs to teach and support hospitals in making patient care safer, provide technical assistance to hospitals so that hospitals can achieve quality measurement goals, and establish and implement a system to track and monitor hospital progress in meeting quality improvement goals.

Achieving the Partnership for Patients’ objectives would mean approximately 1.8 million fewer injuries to patients in the hospital, officials say, saving more than 60,000 lives over three years.

A list of the hospitals and other organizations receiving grants is on the next page.