A ‘Patient-First’ Approach To Technical Assistance: Lessons From The RWJF’s Aligning Forces For Quality Program

Recent efforts to provide technical assistance to local organizations working on the front lines of health care innovation have shown me that grantees—like patients—want help that is timely, personalized, and “fits” with the way they live and work. Back in 2007, when the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) launched Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q), we had an audacious goal: bringing together the key players—those people who give, get, and pay for care—in sixteen communities nationwide to improve the quality, equality, and value of health care in each region. Each multistakeholder alliance worked on ways to publicly report information on the cost and quality of health care; improve the clinical quality of care; transform how care is paid for; and engage consumers in efforts to increase the value of the care they receive. By the time the program wound down in 2014, our communities had worked with nearly 600 hospitals and 31,000 primary care physicians that touched the lives of 37 million Americans. Along the way, our sixteen alliances discovered new ways to do everything from standardizing diabetes care to reducing unnecessary visits to the emergency department. They also uncovered meaningful insights on what it takes to, regionally, move the needle on quality of care. For instance, when physicians can see their own results next to those of their peers, performance tends to improve, and when patients feel they have a true voice in their care “journey,” they ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: GrantWatch Hospitals Payment Policy Quality Consumers Health Care Delivery Health Philanthropy Physicians Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Source Type: blogs