Quality Summit to Increase Quality Care
The US Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan announced the formation of the Quality Summit in order to bring together key industry stakeholders and government leader to discuss how current quality programs can be further evaluated and improved upon. Recently the President has signed the Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patient’s First Executive Order. This is to direct federal agencies to develop a Health Quality Roadmap that aims to align and improve reporting on data and quality measure across many federal health programs. There has been a slight improvement over the years regarding HHS quality programs but the many programs have not been evaluated since their inception. The Summit will be chaired by Deputy Secretary Hargan and Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., an internationally renowned expert on healthcare quality and patient safety. Participants of the Summit are mostly comprised of government stakeholders and approximately 15 non-government healthcare industry leaders who will offer critical insight into discussion pertaining to the modernization of HHS’s quality and access to care. They will also identify regulations and mechanisms that need to be overhauled in order to improve the provider’s ability to deliver high-quality care to patients. This Summit marks the start of a new initiative that could potentially change the current HHS Quality Programs. The changes that can be enacted during this summit could potentially produce more jobs and contracts for small businesses. However, on the flip side, this could also reduce opportunities as well since this could cut jobs and contracts that are inefficient/non-beneficial for the programs. Whatever the case there is definitely change on the horizon, whether it would affect us negatively or positively only time will tell.
HHS will accept nominations for participants beginning on Tuesday, July 9, 2019, and ending on Wednesday, July 31, 2019. Nominations should consist of a one-page cover letter summarizing an applicant’s qualifications along with an applicant’s resume or CV. Nominations must be submitted via e-mail to DeputySecretary@hhs.gov with the subject line: “Quality Summit Application.”
Author: Larry Pan
