42 U.S.C. § 299b–1 — Private-public partnerships to improve organization and delivery

(a) Support for efforts to develop information on quality (1) Scientific and technical support. As the lead federal agency for health care research and quality, the Agency may give scientific and technical help to private and public efforts that improve health care quality, including help to accrediting organizations. (2) Role of the Agency. This help includes: (A) Finding and testing ways to evaluate the health of people enrolled in health plans (by plan type, provider, and provider arrangement) and other groups, including people getting long-term care. (B) Ongoing work to develop, test, and share quality measures, including measures of health and how well people can function. (C) Gathering and sharing quality measures developed by private and public groups. (D) Helping build better health care information systems. (E) Creating survey tools that measure what patients and beneficiaries think of their care. (F) Finding and sharing ways to bring quality information into decisions made by purchasers and consumers. (b) Centers for education and research on therapeutics (1) In general. The Secretary, through the Director and working with the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, must set up a grant program to fund one or more centers to do the work listed below. (2) Required activities. Each center must: (A) Do state-of-the-art research to: (i) Raise awareness of new uses for drugs, biological products, and devices; ways to use them more effectively; and the risks of new uses or combining them. (ii) Give clear clinical information to health care providers, pharmacists and pharmacy benefit managers, health maintenance organizations, insurers and government agencies, and patients and consumers. (iii) Improve care quality while lowering costs, by encouraging appropriate use of drugs, biological products, and devices, and by preventing harmful side effects — including side effects that lead to unneeded hospital stays. (B) Research how well drugs, biological products, and devices compare to each other on effectiveness, cost, and safety. (C) Do other work the Secretary decides is appropriate — except a grant cannot be used to help the Secretary review new drugs, biological products, or devices. (c) Reducing errors in medicine Following Part C of this chapter, the Director must research and build private-public partnerships to: (1) Find the causes of preventable health care errors and patient injuries. (2) Develop, test, and evaluate ways to reduce errors and improve patient safety. (3) Share the strategies that work across the health care industry.