Second Phase of RWJ Initiative Aims to Develop National Model of Care

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, or RWJF, is investing $300 million in the second phase of a far-reaching initiative that could produce a national model for health care.

The Aligning Forces for Quality initiative is designed to improve care in 14 communities across the United States by giving physicians and patients the necessary tools and resources to enhance the delivery and provision of care while also reducing racial and ethnic barriers to health care.

During the first phase of the initiative, the grantees focused on improving health care for patients with chronic illnesses in outpatient settings, such as physician offices and clinics. With the new $300 million investment, RWJF is expanding the program, launching a second phase that will seek to accomplish four objectives:

The initiative also should produce a health care model for the rest of the country, said Bruce Siegel, director of the Aligning Forces for Quality program and a research professor in the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University in Washington. "Several years from now we want to point to the aligning forces communities and say, 'These places have achieved high quality patient-centered care,'" said Siegel during a June 5 press conference here. "They have something to teach the rest of us."

RWJF launched the first phase of the Aligning Forces for Quality initiative in 2006, and chose the project's 14 areas, which together account for 11 percent of the U.S. population, for their "unique assets" and ability to create better health care systems in their respective communities, Siegel said.

"We are aiming for something revolutionary because getting all the major entities who influence health care in any one place to agree on common goals related to improving care is not easy work," said Siegel. "We are not embarking on this without a sense of the enormous risks involved. But we think the greater risk lies in not doing anything."

Under the project's second phase, project grantees will receive money and a massive amount of assistance and expertise from RWJF, according to Siegel. The RWJF will work to make sure that the "enormous wealth of knowledge and best practices the foundation, its partners and grantees have amassed over the years gets to the right places."

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of RWJF, noted during the press conference that the initiative is national in scope even though it is focused on 14 communities in California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin.

"We are adopting this approach because we know that health care quality is a national problem and a problem for us all," said Lavizzo-Mourey. "But health care is delivered locally, and that is where the fixes must be implemented."