Over the last 18 months, our licensing team in collaboration with trade organizations from every sphere of healthcare delivery, partnered with Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG), Arizona’s Medicare Quality Improvement Organization, in its statewide initiative designed to reduce by 4000 the number of preventable hospital readmissions. Aptly named the No Place Like Home Campaign, because there really is no place like home when it comes to patient healing, the campaign not only met their 18 month goal, but exceeded it by a large margin. Under the skilled leadership of Barbara Averyt, BSHA, Catherine Price, MSEd and the Care Transitions team of HSAG, the coalition partners were able to prevent 5,872 Medicare readmissions, an improvement of almost 20% from the 2010 baseline data. These results propelled Arizona to the #1 position in the nation for highest relative improvement rate in reducing Medicare hospital readmissions and became a model for many other states to replicate in their own campaigns to reduce readmissions. These stellar results are a tribute to the close collaboration and responsive partnerships between ADHS, HSAG and the multiple stakeholder organizations in the campaign. For information on the NPLH campaign, please visit their website at www.noplacelikehomeaz.com.
