2002.02.01:HHS to Propose New Funding and Focus on Patient Safety

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, Feb. 1, 2002

Contact:

HHS Press Office
(202) 690-6343

HHS TO PROPOSE NEW FUNDING AND FOCUS ON PATIENT SAFETY

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced that President Bush will propose $10 million in new funding for an initiative to improve patient safety and reduce medical errors. The increased funding will bring the total HHS budget for improving patient safety to $84 million in fiscal year 2003.

The funds will support efforts to put known safety technologies into wider use, develop new approaches and support a stronger system for rapid reporting of adverse medical events.

Medical errors have been estimated by the Institute of Medicine to cause between 44,000 and 98,000 hospital deaths and cost between $17 billion and $29 billion in excess health care costs in the United States each year.

"Quality health care is a priority for Americans and for this administration," Secretary Thompson said. "The President's initiative will provide new resources and a new focus on our efforts to improve patient safety, including the HHS Patient Safety Task Force created last year."

Under the initiative, HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) will receive $60 million, an increase of $5 million, for patient safety. A portion of the increased funds will provide "challenge grants" to states to encourage the adoption of proven but underused technologies by health care organizations to reduce medical errors. The new funding will also be used to train on-site patient safety experts to provide technical assistance and support to states to encourage a culture of patient safety. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will also receive $5 million in new funding for patient safety, bringing their total funding for this issue to $22 million. The new funds will allow the agency to improve its ability to assess and follow-up on reports of adverse events that occur after the use of FDA-regulated products. Specific initiatives include partnering with the private sector to develop technologies, such as bar coding medications, so that electronic prescription programs can be introduced widely and thus diminish the number of medication errors.

The President's proposed fiscal year 2003 budget will also again request $2 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for developing a Web-based system for providers to report data on infections that patients acquire in hospitals. The proposal maintains the President's $2 million commitment to this program made in his fiscal year 2002 budget.

The President's $10 million patient safety initiative builds on the work of the HHS Patient Safety Task Force. Secretary Thompson formed this internal task force, whose members include AHRQ, FDA, CDC and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in April 2001 to identify the data that health care providers, states and others need to collect to improve patient safety. The group is working to coordinate federal patient safety data collection, monitoring, analysis and feedback efforts in an effort to enhance the usability of data collected on patient safety and medical errors while reducing the reporting burdens for health care providers.

"Like the HHS Patient Safety Task Force, the President's initiative recognizes and stresses the importance of partnerships -- within HHS, across the federal government and with the private sector and health care professionals," said Secretary Thompson.

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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at www.hhs.gov/news.