The Peter G. Peterson Foundation plans to spend at least $200 million on healthcare initiatives designed to improve patient outcomes and lower costs. The grantmaker announced the establishment of the Peterson Center on Healthcare at an event in Washington Thursday.
The center is already working with Stanford University's Clinical Excellence Research Center to locate high performing primary-care doctors and highlight the common practices that enable their success. That initial study assessed 15,000 primary-care sites based on 41 different metrics and came up with 10 best practices. Among them: round-the-clock access to care for patients, allowing staff to perform all duties allowed under their licenses and adjusting treatment in response to patient complaints.
The Peterson Center is also partnering with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation to create a new online database to track the performance of the U.S. healthcare system. The Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker will scrutinize healthcare costs and outcomes and compare them to how other countries are performing.
“I really do believe that figuring out what works in delivery reform is a central challenge for us right now,” said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, at the event. “We don't know what works and what doesn't.”
The Peterson Center is also working with the National Quality Forum to study ways to provide greater transparency around cost and quality data to both patients and providers.
Jeffrey Selberg, executive director of the Peterson Center, said the key to success will be finding and replicating the best clinical practices from around the country. “Those pockets of excellence are out there,” said Selberg, who previously was chief operations officer of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. “That is the great news.”
The center's advisory board includes Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Cleveland Clinic CEO Delos “Toby” Cosgrove and former CMS Administrator Mark McClellan.
The Peterson Foundation has assets of nearly $500 million, according to its most recent tax return (PDF). The New York-based grantmaker was established by Pete Peterson, a founder of the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, and a former CEO of Lehman Bros.
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