INTERACT Media Pitch Letter Template
[INSERT DATE]
Dear [INSERT NAME OF MEDIA MEMBER],
There’s certainly a major amount of buzz lately about the Affordable Care Act or more commonly known as health care reform. One of thevery important components is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ability to impose reimbursement penalties on hospitals for avoidable and costly re-hospitalizations, which CMS estimates cost the U.S. health care system an estimated $18 billion a year.
Nursing homes can play an important part in reducing these readmissions. According to CMS, almost one in four hospital patients who are transferred to nursing homes are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days.
(NAME OF FACILITY) is doing something about this largely avoidable and costly problem. (NAME OF FACILITY) has begun implementing a quality improvement program calledINTERACT® to help us reduce the chance of our residents returning to the hospital. Moving a fragile resident from one facility to another can be very disruptive and stressful to our residents and their families, especially when many of these transfers are preventable.
This complicated, costly problem requires a multi-faceted solution. INTERACT can be the first step. INTERACT is an acronym for "Interventions to Reduce Acute Care Transfers," and was developed by an interdisciplinary team led by Dr. Joseph Ouslander at FloridaAtlantic University, whose primary research area of interest is long-term care quality. INTERACT includes strategies and tools to help address these trends as a means of preventing future unnecessary hospitalizations.
Medline Industries, Inc., the country’s leading provider of medical supplies and services to the long-term care industry, partnered with FAU to make available online training and tools for the INTERACT quality improvement program through Medline’s online clinical resource,Medline University (MU).
With health care reform top of mind in the media and in our communities, we thought you’d be interested in hearing how our facility is reducing costs and at the same time enhancing patient care. I will be in touch with you shortly but, in the meantime, if you would like to learn more about INTERACT and how it’s helping reducing readmissions and improve our quality of care, please contact me at xxx-xxx-xxxx or email me at (insert email address).
Sincerely,
[INSERT MEDIA CONTACT NAME]
[INSERT MEDIA CONTACT EMAIL]
[INSERT MEDIA CONTACT PHONE NUMBER]