NEW HAVEN — A local coalition called the Greater New Haven Coalition for Safe Transitions and Readmission Reductions (GNH CoSTARR) is one of 30 community-based programs nationwide to date to receive an award from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to improve the quality of care for Medicare patients and keep them from being readmitted to hospitals.

GNH CoSTARR is a partnership between Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH), the Hospital of Saint Raphael (HSR) and the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut (AASCC) that was formed last summer. One of its goals is to reduce the number of Medicare patients who are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of a previous admission. Grace Jenq, MD, medical director of the YNHH East Pavilion, was applicant program director.

Building on previous efforts, GNH CoSTARR will deploy special care transition teams with registered nurses as care coordinators at YNHH and HSR and social workers from the Agency on Aging. Teams will develop holistic, patient-tailored discharge planning to help patients recover successfully upon discharge. The teams will work to improve communications between the hospitals and nursing homes, home health agencies and primary care providers regionwide, as well as support patients through post-hospital transitions, and also inform them about community resources.

CMS hopes to reduce preventable errors in hospital settings by 40 percent and reduce hospital readmissions by 20 percent over a three-year period. Achieving these goals has the potential to save up to 60,000 lives, prevent millions of injuries and unnecessary complications in patient care, and save up to $50 billion for Medicare over ten years.

To learn more visit healthcare.gov/partnershipforpatients or go.cms.gov/caretransitions.