NJHA will kick off a new national quality improvement initiative on Tuesday with a webinar.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently awarded  NJHA’s Health Research and Educational Trust of New Jersey a two-year Hospital Improvement Innovation Network (HIIN) contract to continue efforts to reduce hospital-acquired conditions and readmissions. The HIIN will build upon work already done through CMS’s Hospital Engagement Networks. NJHA’s HRET is one of 16 organizations to receive the new contract.

NJHA, in partnership with Healthcare Quality Strategies Inc. and the New Jersey Innovation Institute, is hosting a HIIN kick-off webinar Dec. 6 at 1 p.m. to share how New Jersey’s participants will align with the CMS goals.

Thanks to the work of hospitals across the country that participated in the HEN and HEN 2.0 initiatives, providers have been able to save more than 87,000 lives resulting in more than $19.8 billion in cost savings over the past four years. NJHA’s HIIN will align, accelerate and amplify the prior HEN and Quality Improvement Network-Quality Improvement Organizations successes to pursue the ambitious new goals of reducing all-cause inpatient harm by 20 percent and readmissions by 12 percent by 2019.

For more information and to register for the webinar, visit the NJHA webinar web site.