Richard Blumenthal

My recommendation to you, Senator Blumenthal, and to your colleagues on this committee and in the Senate, is to draft legislation that supports our efforts to provide seamless, accountable, and beneficial patient navigation across the…

And for your use of patient navigation, and thank you for being here today.

We need partnerships for patients, but even more partnerships with patients so that they are involved and engaged as participants.

The ultimate form of identification would be some kind of national patient identifier...

I promise only a very few.

And what has been the response since you were invited to Washington? Have you found greater receptivity since then?

It is so critically important not only for saving dollars, which will be a priority going forward as the Affordable Care Act is implemented, but also for stopping the kinds of patient safety violations that are so negatively impactful on…

The QAPI program requires a plan on the part of the skilled nursing facility.

If there are problems indicated at a particular nursing home, do you accelerate the re-review or the re-survey, the visits in that case?

And the team's report then goes to someone at CMS, or----

It requires some of these necessary changes and considerations to be done through regulation.

I haven't heard a more thoughtful or insightful panel, and I'm very, very proud that it happened here in Connecticut.

In the 2013 legislative session, we will be asking the Connecticut legislature to raise the maximum fine to $10,000.

Would you support our attempt to change the Connecticut law from 1.9 to 2.3 in 2013, and 2.3 to 2.7 in 2014 in the next legislative session?

Will there be funding for nursing homes to put electronic health records?

Patient safety certified. That would be a great qualification to spread more generally among health care providers and institutions.

Quite honestly, those numbers of reductions in urinary tract infections and pneumonia and other accomplishments, measureable outcomes, are really extraordinarily impressive.

Thank you, and thank you for your testimony today.

There is the need in part because though we complain in the medical profession and in the health care industry a lot about HIPAA...

Thank you, Senator Blumenthal, for the opportunity to appear today to discuss CMS' efforts to improve patient safety in nursing home residents.

Medication reconciliation between care settings is an important source of errors and potential danger for seniors.

This is not pie in the sky stuff. This is real-life steps that can be taken, can achieve results, and I think it's a very powerful story.

And by that recommendation, I assume you would also recommend that patient navigation be a reimbursable expense.

Thank you, Senator Blumenthal, for your never-ending commitment to ensure that patients and consumer voices are heard.

Well, I'm going to go visit some of the bad ones as well.