The National Rural Accountable Care Consortium (NRACC) was recognized on Aug. 3 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for supporting a culture of person and family engagement within their enrolled clinical practices.
This award is a strong endorsement of NRACC’s clinical-practice coaching that targets meaningful integration of patient and family voices into clinical operations, and improves patient experience by regularly capturing and discussing data on patient satisfaction.
The honor was awarded during the National Expert Panel clinical practice transformation conference in Columbia, MD, by the CMS Director of Quality Improvement Dennis Wagner, TCPI Director Robert Flemming and Dr. Paul McGann, CMS chief medical officer (CMO) for Quality Improvement. The award also acknowledged and honored the leaders of an exemplary clinical practice enrolled with NRACC, Jeremy Bradley, MD and their patient representative.
NRACC, through its Practice Transformation Network, has employed innovative strategies since 2015 to engage people and families in mostly rural health care practices to improve the quality of health care. Engagement is at the heart of NRACC’s work. Specific successful techniques include distributing computer tablets to our practices to streamline patient satisfaction survey administration. NRACC also has a strong track record educating practices on a shared decision-making model between clinicians and their patients – directly supporting a patient and family centered culture.
The NRACC serves more than 8,000 clinicians nationwide through a four-year grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). The NRACC PTN is part of the CMMI Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPI) and works with clinicians to improve the quality of patient care and clinical processes, and to prepare them for value-based healthcare payment models.