CLEARLAKE, Calif. – St. Helena Hospital Clearlake is improving the quality, safety and affordability of health care for the patients it serves as a participant in the Partnership for Patients initiative.

Partnership for Patients, established by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (Innovation Center), offers support to physicians, nurses and other clinicians working in and out of hospitals.

The goal is to keep patients from getting injured or sicker while in the hospital so they can heal without complications.

Specifically, participants focus on reducing preventable readmissions to hospitals by 20 percent and reducing preventable hospital-acquired conditions by 40 percent by the end of 2013.

In doing so, CMS estimates the partnership has the potential to, over the next three years, save 60,000 lives, reduce millions of preventable injuries and complications in patient care and save as much as $35 billion, including up to $10 billion in savings to Medicare.

“Safety is the foundation of our promise to patients,” said Nia Lendaris, vice president for patient care of St. Helena Hospital. “We are routinely seeking to implement measures that improve quality and help patients transition safely to their homes.”

St. Helena Hospital Clearlake has joined with the Premier health care alliance to participate in the initiative.

Premier, a health system-owned performance improvement alliance of hospitals and other health care organizations, is the second largest of 26 Hospital Engagement Networks (HEN) approved by CMS to participate in the initiative.

As a HEN, Premier is helping identify the solutions already working to reduce health care-acquired conditions, and spread them to other hospitals and health care providers.

St. Helena Hospital Clearlake joins more than 540 hospitals nationwide in Premier’s HEN and will benefit from Premier’s intensive training and education programs to make patient care safer, technical assistance to achieve quality measurement goals, online repository of safety literature and implementation strategies, national and regional best practice sharing forums, and data benchmarking and tracking to measures progress in meeting quality improvement goals.

In total, Partnership for Patients consists of more than 6,500 partners, including hospitals, physicians, nurses and patient advocates.