Hospitals & Health Systems

Hospitals and health systems participating in the Hospital Quality Improvement Contractor (HQIC) program receive assistance from Health Quality Innovators, which operates the Health Quality Innovation Network (HQIN), to improve their Medicare star rating and avoid payment penalties by implementing processes associated with safer, more effective care.

HQIC is open to new participants as well as those wanting to continue the progress they began in the recently concluded Hospital Improvement Innovation Network (HIIN) program. Improvement priorities include hospital-acquired infections, readmissions, sepsis, venous thromboembolism, ventilator-associated events, falls, opioids, behavioral health and more.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) funds Health Quality Innovators to provide this no-cost support. A limited number of hospitals across the country are eligible to participate in this four-year program. These include rural or critical access hospitals, as well as those with less than a three-star rating from Medicare and those serving vulnerable populations.

HQIN also is working with hospitals in over 40 communities in four states with funding from the CMS Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) program. This work focuses on connecting hospitals to local resources for coordinating care, responding to the opioid crisis, enhancing emergency preparedness planning and improving population health. These hospitals and communities receive no-cost training, access to quality improvement tools and data analyses to guide their progress. They also receive coaching from Health Quality Innovators or one of our locally based HQIN improvement partners, Constellation Quality Health or the Kansas Healthcare Collaborative.