Stanford part of $200 million effort to improve health-care delivery
Arnold Milstein, MD, MPH
BY KRIS NEWBY
DECEMBER 8, 2014
The Clinical Excellence Research Center at Stanford has identified features of primary care practices that lead to high-quality, patient-centric care at lower-than-average costs.
The Peterson Center on Healthcare, a new nonprofit organization established by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, has committed $200 million to improve U.S. health care by finding and disseminating ways to improve the quality of care and lower medical spending.
On Dec. 4, the new organization announced its first three initiatives:
-Identifying features of high-performing primary care practices. Stanford University’s Clinical Excellence Research Center has identified 10 features distinguishing primary care teams that deliver high-quality, patient-centric care at lower-than-average costs. In the coming year, CERC will develop a list of best practices for other health-care areas, such as medical specialty practices.
-A health system performance tracker. The Kaiser Family Foundation is providing a new digital platform dedicated to analyzing the performance of the U.S. health-care system. It provides clear, up-to-date information on trends, drivers and issues that impact the U.S. system, and a means of performance comparison with other countries.
-Strategies for improving health-care data transparency. Patients and providers often have trouble making informed decisions about their care because quality and cost information is not readily accessible or reliable. The Peterson Center on Healthcare is collaborating with the National Quality Forum to bring together leaders from both the public and private sectors to identify specific actions that can be taken to make data and analytic tools more accessible to systems that track health-care improvement.
The Peterson Center will collaborate with stakeholders across the health-care system in grant-making, partnerships and research that contributes to the continual improvement of the U.S. health-care system. Its advisory board of health-care researchers and policy leaders includes Arnold Milstein, MD, of Stanford University; Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania; and Harvey Fineberg, MD, PhD, of the Institute of Medicine.
More information is available on the Peterson Center's website at http://www.petersonhealthcare.org.
Original article appeared here.