USA: New CMS rule incentivises safety practices and strategies

A new federal rule calls on acute care hospitals to attest to supporting patient safety with strategies and best practices in five areas:

• Leadership commitment to eliminating preventable harm.
• Strategic planning and organizational policy.
• Culture of safety and learning health system.
• Accountability and transparency
• Patient and family engagement.

The new requirement — the Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM) — was published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in final form last week and is part of the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) programme.

Barbara Fain, Executive Director of the Betsy Lehman Center, notes that the new measure closely parallels the Massachusetts Roadmap. “Through financial incentives and transparency, CMS is using its platform to motivate greater hospital investment in the same approaches endorsed by the Roadmap because they are known to reduce preventable patient harm,” she says. 

With the Roadmap and continued guidance from the Massachusetts Health Care Safety and Quality Consortium, the Betsy Lehman Center is already developing resources that the state’s hospitals can use to excel in each of the measure’s five domains.

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Source: Betsy Lehman Center, 8 August 2024