Category: Patient and Family Engagement (PFE)

Empower Your Patients: With your help, we can make a difference!

Have any of your patients or their caregivers/family members shared with you their feelings about not being heard?

Has a patient ever shared an idea they felt would be useful for others with ESRD?

If so, we know you’ll understand the value of engaging such individuals in efforts to improve patient care. We need your help!

The Network has convened a group of Patient Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to provide patient perspective and feedback to the Network on educational materials, quality improvement projects and other issues that relate to our work in improving care to ESRD patients. Please consider nominating patients, transplant recipients, and family members/care partners who are interested in sharing their talents and ideas with other SMEs in the Network.

What do SMEs do? Ultimately, they help Network staff understand what is important to patients, share useful ideas and experiences, and foster Network initiatives at their own dialysis facility and transplant center. Their efforts focus on providing feedback on Network quality improvement activities related to infection prevention, transplant referrals, home dialysis training, vocational rehabilitation, and patient engagement.

For more information, please contact your local Network.

New Priorities and Goals Planned for ESRD Stakeholders

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) National Quality Strategy (NQS) is a national effort to align public- and private-sector stakeholders to achieve better health and healthcare for all Americans. It was developed “through a transparent and collaborative process with input from a range of stakeholders. More than 300 groups, organizations, and individuals, representing all sectors of the health care industry and the general public, provided comments.”

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contracts with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Networks to implement the NQS principles and HHS Secretary’s priorities in the ESRD community. Starting in December 2017, Networks will launch a set of new quality improvement activities, data reporting requirements, and educational programs that reflect updated priorities and goals.

HHS Secretary’s Priorities

  1. Reform, Strengthen, and Modernize the Nation’s Health Care System
  2. Protect the Health of Americans Where They Live, Learn, Work, and Play
  3. Strengthen the Economic and Social Well-Being of Americans Across the Lifespan
  4. Foster Sound, Sustained Advances in the Sciences
  5. Promote Effective and Efficient Management and Stewardship

CMS Goals

  1. Empower patients to make decisions about their health care
  2. Usher in a new era of state flexibility and local leadership
  3. Support innovative approaches to improve quality, accessibility, and affordability
  4. Improve the CMS customer experience

Teleconferencing Can Help You Involve Your Patients in their Plans of Care

Part of the responsibility of the interdisciplinary team (IDT) is to include patients, and if requested, their care partners and family members in both developing/setting goals and reviewing the patient plan of care.

Is it acceptable to hold a plan of care meeting with the IDT and the patient, their care partner or family members (if requested) via telephone conference? As stated in the CMS Interpretive Guidance for the Conditions for Coverage for End-Stage Renal Disease Facilities, the answer is “yes.”

“A substitute mechanism for a team conference needs to facilitate discussion among team members about the information gathered from the comprehensive patient assessment and provide the opportunity for team coordination and development of an effective, individualized plan of care for the patient to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved. To facilitate full team participation in conferences, any member, including the patient, may participate through telecommunication.”

CMS Interpretive Guidelines (see page 205): https://esrd.ipro.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/08/InterpretiveGuidelines.pdfÂ

For more information on the regulations on plans of care, see the CMS Conditions for Coverage for end-stage renal disease facilities. Subpart C – Patient Care: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title42-vol5/xml/CFR-2011-title42-vol5-sec494-90.xml

 

 

 

 

Ticket to Work: Resources for Patients on SSI/SSDI

Do your patients want to re-enter the work force?  Do they need vocational training?  The Social Security Administration’s Ticket to Work Program can help Social Security beneficiaries go to work while they keep their health coverage. Ticket to Work service providers offer Social Security disability beneficiaries (persons who receive SSI or SSDI), age 18 through 64, who want to work with free job support.  Services offered may include job coaching, job counseling, training, benefits counseling and job placement.  Additional information and resources to help your patients  learn more about the Ticket to Work program and Social Security’s Work Incentives are available below:

Call the Ticket to Work Help Line at 1-866-968-7842/ 866-833-2967 (TTY)