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Foundation Pledges Millions For Quality


November 1, 2007

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J., has pledged $15.9 million in grants to develop and test a national approach to use I.T. to provide health care quality and cost data to the public.

The project will use already available data from private health plans and Medicare to paint a quality and cost picture for patients. The participating organizations will use software to gather the information and normalize data for the project, says John Lumpkin, M.D., senior vice president at the foundation. "The information is data already collected by the plans and Medicare," he says.

Organizations receiving grants for the project include the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution ($8.7 million) and America's Health Insurance Plans Foundation ($4.2 million). An additional $3 million has been set aside to fund efforts to identify feasible cost measures.

The goal is to come up with one model for assessing performance and reporting data. Physicians often have multiple quality initiatives they are trying to comply with that request different data. The Robert Wood Johnson project requires no extra effort on behalf of the physician, Lumpkin says.

Eventually patients will be able to go online and see how a group practice rates for cost and quality when it comes to treating 20 different conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease. The project will build on the work done by the Quality Alliance Steering Committee, a group made up of members from the AQA alliance and the Hospital Quality Alliance. Both groups comprise different health care stakeholders, including physicians, nurses, employers and health plans focused on developing a framework for cost and quality data.

Participants say work related to the data aggregation will begin this year with some information available next year. All aspects of the project should be completed by 2010, including the implementation of ongoing quality reporting.

Besides aggregating cost and quality data for the public, the project will also address and identify information relating to health care treatment disparity. Research has shown disparities in health and in the quality of care for many patients of different races and ethnicities. An aspect of the project will include identification and measurement of these gaps in order to help providers develop specific interventions that attempt to minimize these differences.

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