The Fund supports independent research on health and social issues and makes grants to improve health care practice and policy. We are dedicated to helping people become more informed about their health care and improving care for vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, low-income families, minorities, and the uninsured.
Project Title: Spreading Use of a Health Care "Hotspotting" Tool to Improve Quality and Reduce Costs
Principal Investigator: Jeffrey Brenner, M.D.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $254,472
The Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, in Camden, N.J., has worked with local providers to map where the biggest users of emergency department and inpatient hospital care reside in this high-risk community—a process known as "hotspotting"—and implement interventions to improve care coordination and quality and reduce costs.
Project Title: Exemplars of Local Health Care Delivery Reform: Where Policy Meets Practice
Principal Investigator: Douglas McCarthy, M.B.A.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $188,657
This project will generate knowledge about how local health care organizations and stakeholders are continuing to transform health care delivery to improve quality, efficiency, and health.
Project Title: The State Action to Avoid Rehospitalizations (STAAR) Initiative, Phase 5
Principal Investigator: Donald Goldmann, M.D.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $750,000
The five-year State Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations (STAAR) initiative has created an improvement collaborative in Massachusetts, Michigan, and Washington to test ways to improve the quality of transitional care patients receive as they leave the hospital and enter a postacute care facility or home care.
Project Title: The Spread of High-Performance Integrated Care Delivery Systems: Assessing Two Hybrid Approaches
Principal Investigator: Robert Reid, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $347,741
Across the United States, health care organizations are forming new clinical and financial partnerships in pursuit of higher-quality care, better patient outcomes, and lower costs. This project will examine clinical and organizational changes and new physician incentives adopted by two high-performance integrated health care delivery systems: Group Health Cooperative, in Seattle, and Scott & White Healthcare, in Temple, Texas.
Project Title: The Mongan Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy: Support for Program Direction and Fellowships, 2013–14
Principal Investigator: Joan Reede, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., M.B.A.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $800,000
During the first fellowship year, physicians enrolled in the master’s program in public health or public administration at Harvard University receive an enriched program that includes study in health policy, public health, and management, all with an emphasis on minority health issues.
Project Title: Strengthening Primary Care Through Multipayer Medical Home Initiatives
Principal Investigator: Mary Takach, M.P.H.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $521,386
This project seeks to accelerate multipayer initiatives in four states by helping public and private payers reach agreement on key issues, such as medical home qualification standards, payment models, patient attribution methods, and evaluation metrics.
Project Title: Assessing the Influence of Medicaid Managed Care on Health Care Delivery Change
Principal Investigator: Laura Summer, M.P.H., and Jack Hoadley, Ph.D.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $224,984
Georgetown University investigators will interview health care providers in hospitals, medical practices, and other care settings in four communities across four states to shed light on the delivery system changes these plans have fostered and the impact different managed care models have had on patients. The findings will inform policymakers, state Medicaid administrators, and plan sponsors about the most effective plan designs.
Project Title: Advancing Accountable Care Organizations in Medicaid
Principal Investigator: Tricia McGinnis, M.P.P., M.P.H.
Date Awarded: July 10, 2012
Award Amount: $248,558
The Commonwealth Fund supported Center for Health Care Strategies to develop a curriculum for, and implement the early stages of, a multistate Medicaid ACO learning collaborative. Building on that work, this grant will support a one-year learning collaborative designed to: 1) help six state Medicaid agencies develop and implement ACO programs; and 2) disseminate early lessons and best practices.
Project Title: National Dissemination of a Program for Improving Management of Acute Conditions in Nursing Homes
Principal Investigator: Joseph G. Ouslander, M.D.
Date Awarded: April 10, 2012
Award Amount: $260,000
Some 200 facilities in Massachusetts and 35 in New York City have received INTERACT training, with several hundred more homes nationally deploying at least some of the component interventions. This project will build on this success by refining the program and helping to spread it to nursing homes throughout the United States.
Project Title: Educating Key Audiences About How the US Health System is Reforming
Principal Investigator: Barry A. Scholl
Date Awarded: April 10, 2012
Award Amount: $200,000
This special communications authorization will support a range of activities over the coming year to provide traditional and nontraditional Commonwealth Fund audiences with comprehensible information about the many ways in which U.S. health care is changing.
Project Title: Online Resources for Educating Key Audiences About Policy and Delivery System Reforms
Principal Investigator: Barry A. Scholl
Date Awarded: April 10, 2012
Award Amount: $100,000
This special authorization will support the development and dissemination of a greater number of these features over the coming year, a critical period for health reform.
Project Title: Enhancing the International Program's Communications and Publications Capacity, Year 4
Principal Investigator: Bradford H. Gray, Ph.D.
Date Awarded: April 10, 2012
Award Amount: $82,916
To strengthen the impact of The Commonwealth Fund’s international program and spark creative health policy thinking in the United States, this grant will support an external contractor working with Fund staff to produce a series of issue briefs highlighting innovations in health policy and practice from abroad that might be transferable to the United States.
Project Title: Evaluating a Comprehensive Primary Care Medical Home Payment Model in Albany, N.Y., Phase 2
Principal Investigator: David Bates, M.D., M.Sc.
Date Awarded: April 10, 2012
Award Amount: $371,661
This evaluation will assess changes in quality, utilization, and health care costs in the 24 primary care sites in the Albany region. In addition, the evaluation team will complete the analysis of the five original sites included in phase 1.
Project Title: Cost Analysis of a Nurse Care Management Program for High-Risk Medicaid Patients in Montana
Principal Investigator: Stephen Seninger, Ph.D.
Date Awarded: April 10, 2012
Award Amount: $155,488
With a preliminary analysis of the program indicating cost savings after six months, this project will support an external evaluation over a full year to determine the longer-run impact on health care utilization, quality of care, and costs.
Project Title: Examining a Safety-Net Health System’s Transformation into an Accountable Care Organization
Principal Investigator: Karen Hacker, M.D., M.P.H.
Date Awarded: April 10, 2012
Award Amount: $148,557
This grant will support an in-depth case study of CHA’s approach to delivery system and payment reform, documenting the organization’s progress in becoming an ACO, clarifying the challenges for safety-net systems, and identifying lessons to help these providers deliver efficient, patient-centered population-based care.