Cardinal Health Foundation commits grants to help organizations improve effectiveness of patient care

The 13 winners of the first multi-year E3 Patient Safety Grants from Cardinal Health Foundation are striving to improve health outcomes for high-risk patients more quickly than the industry norm.

"Cardinal Health Foundation has committed two- to three-year grants totaling nearly $2 million to help organizations improve the effectiveness, efficiency and excellence of patient care," said Dianne Radigan, vice president of Community Relations at Cardinal Health.

Each organization will focus on engaging patients and/or their caregivers in self-care, and improving medication safety use for patients during transitions of care, such as transition from the hospital to the home.

As they develop their programs, recipients also will participate in a learning collaborative facilitated by the Alliance for Integrated Medication Management (AIMM), which is designed to help organizations more quickly implement evidence-based practices.

The multi-year learning collaborative will focus on transformational leadership, quality improvement and patient engagement. AIMM coaches will provide training and guide grantees through an accelerated quality improvement process that will enable them to leverage their work and achieve more significant results.

AIMM's Executive Director Todd Sorensen, PharmD, said, "The collaborative is designed to facilitate and support practice transformation under an accelerated timeframe. Grant recipients will learn from each other and accomplish more than they can on their own."

Since 2008, through its E3 Patient Safety Grant Program, the Cardinal Health Foundation has invested $16 million to hundreds of healthcare organizations across the country. "We support a wide array of patient safety work, but the focus is always on accelerating the rate of change with two goals: improved patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs," Radigan said.

Because of the complexities in healthcare and healthcare systems, it takes an average of 17 years for evidence-based practices to be fully implemented into healthcare practices, according to The National Institutes of Health.

"Within a year or two, our past grantees are affecting change, eliminating errors and creating lasting improvement," Radigan said. "They are reducing readmissions to hospitals, reducing lengths-of-stay and, most importantly, saving lives."