Health Affairs, 27, no. 5 (2008): 1464-1466 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.27.5.1464 © 2008 by Project HOPE	New Online   McAllen, TX & Beyond: An Expert Roundtable   Geography & Reform   Medicaid or Insurance Exchange?   Siren Song of New GME   Public Plan Option: Pro & Con

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GrantWatch

EDITOR’S NOTE: Some parts of the GrantWatch section are published on the Web only. The online-only material usually includes selected coverage of both recently announced grants and publications about or funded by foundations. (Reporting of selected grant outcomes and key personnel changes at foundations, as well as GrantWatch essays, reports, and interviews, are published in both print and online form.)

Online GrantWatch material is posted twice a month. Click here to sign up to receive an e-mail alert when new content is posted.

GrantWatch is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Health Care Delivery

Grant outcome:

Innovative Care Models, a Web site, was launched by Health Workforce Solutions LLC (HWS) (located in San Francisco) in April 2008. Part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)–funded research project, the site says that it “provides detailed profiles of 24 successful care delivery models” in three categories: acute care, “bridge continuum,” and comprehensive care. (The bridge continuum model “spans the transition from acute hospital to outpatient care—either clinic or home,” Bobbi Kimball, principal investigator, explained to Health Affairs.) The Web site says that recent “trends create an undeniable need for new models of care delivery that can leverage new roles and technology to deliver care to more individuals at lower cost while preserving (and hopefully improving) patient quality [of care], safety, and satisfaction.” The Web site aims to encourage replication and spur innovation.

To identify good models, HWS first did a broad-based e-mail inquiry, a literature review, and Web research; those efforts generated 171 leads. Using set criteria, it then chose sixty care models and interviewed their staffs via telephone. Finally, HWS applied “ranking criteria,” developed with the help of two groups of experts, to winnow down the list to twenty-four models. (For example, one of the criteria was that models “primarily” serve patients older than age eighteen. Another was that models demonstrate “positive impact on quality [of care], safety, cost, and/or [patient or caregiver] satisfaction.)

Among the models making the final list is Planetree Patient-Centered Care, which is a “patient-centered acute care model that empowers patients and families through education and healing partnerships with caregivers,” according to the Innovative Care Models site. This “holistic care model encourages healing in all dimensions (mental, emotional, spiritual, social, and physical) and integrates compl[e]mentary therapies with conventional medical treatment.” The focus here is on the Planetree model that has been implemented at Griffin Hospital, a teaching hospital in Derby, Connecticut.

The Hospital at Home project, which lets patients with certain conditions “remain at home rather than be treated in the hospital,” is another model profiled, according to a press release. It was developed by researchers at the schools of medicine and public health at the Johns Hopkins University. The John A. Hartford Foundation funded the model’s development, evaluation, and, more recently, dissemination into practice, Bruce Leff explained to Health Affairs.

There are commonalities among many of the models, such as “elevating the role of nurses,” “actively involving patients and their families in care planning and delivery,” and “being easily replicated in a wide variety of healthcare settings,” HWS said.

The Innovative Care Models Web site “continues to get significant traffic from all over the world,” David Cherner, managing partner of HWS, reported to Health Affairs. “Our goal is for the site to become an enduring platform for disseminating information about new care delivery models and promoting innovation and information exchange.” He added, “We are currently exploring funding alternatives to [both] expand . . . the scope of the site and enable more frequent updates” to it.

Funder:

Michael Reese Health Trust, which funds nonprofits in the Chicago metropolitan area (those in the City of Chicago are preferable), counts “innovation in health care delivery” as one of its areas of interest for its Responsive Grant Program, according to its Web site. Advocacy projects “to improve health care systems serving those in greatest need” are also funded via that program. The next deadline for submitting a letter of inquiry to that program is 15 December 2008.

The Health Trust also has a Proactive Grant Program, which aims “to develop more effective, integrated health-care delivery models”; however, it does not accept proposals for these grants.

Recent grant announced:

Broward Regional Health Planning Council (BRHPC), Fort Lauderdale, FL. This grant will be used for “research to identify gaps in primary and preventative health services” across Florida, according to a Blue Foundation for a Healthy Florida press release. First, the Florida Statewide Prevention Quality Indicator Initiative (PQI) is being funded to review “emergency room and hospital inpatient admission data across the state and determine” which of those admissions “could have been prevented,” had high-quality primary care and preventive services been accessible. Michael Hutton of the Blue Foundation explained further to Health Affairs, “If we can better understand and respond to the PQI data, we could theoretically prevent admissions through better outreach, prevention, and education programs.” He added, “A pilot of this [initiative] has already demonstrated success through outreach into the south Broward County area.” When the PQI’s analysis is complete, the BRHPC will provide the ten other health planning councils in the state with quantitative information about their areas. “This knowledge will help councils work with . . . community stakeholders to develop their own approaches to reducing the health conditions most prevalent in their area[s],” the release said. Michael De Lucca, who heads the BRHPC, said in the release that this initiative will engender “unique and targeted” interventions. Hutton also mentioned to the journal that the admissions data are available at the ZIP-code level, and the planning councils will be able to calculate the cost savings in their areas through prevention and “diversion from costly hospital services.” $95,000 over one year. Funded by the Blue Foundation for a Healthy Florida.

Report received:

Physician Organization in Relation to Quality and Efficiency of Care: A Synthesis of Recent Literature, Laura Tollen of the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, April 2008, 29 pp., including appendices, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/Tollen_physician_org_quality_efficiency_1121.pdf?section=4039. Funded by the Commonwealth Fund.

Related resource:

Health Affairs September/October 2008 issue, http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/vol27/issue5/. The theme of this issue is overhauling the health care delivery system. The issue includes papers on the “medical home,” retail health clinics, and “disruptive innovation.” Abstracts of all papers can be viewed free of charge.

Health Care For The Elderly

New funder:

The SCAN Foundation was launched by SCAN Health Plan in April 2008. Its focus is “on innovative solutions to the healthcare needs of California’s seniors,” according to a company press release. The new funder, based in Long Beach and headed by Bruce Chernof, has an endowment of $205 million. Previously director and chief medical officer of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, Chernof came to the foundation in May 2008. SCAN Health Plan, a “nonprofit Medicare Advantage [plan] based in Southern California,” has provided the corpus of the foundation.

Chernof told Health Affairs that the foundation is “focusing on raising public awareness, creating good implementable public policy options,” and supporting dissemination of research on innovative models that advance a high-quality continuum of care for seniors. He explained what “continuum of care” means here. It refers “to the entire spectrum of long-term care linking acute and chronic care.” The foundation uses this phrase “because the public tends to think ‘long-term care’ means ‘nursing homes,’ which represent a tiny piece of long-term care.” The funder is “interested in a full range of services, such as home and community-based services that help seniors remain independent.”

He said that the SCAN Foundation has already awarded “a handful of exciting grants” that will be announced soon. The funder has finished development of its mission and vision statements; it is now working on its list of funding priorities and hopes to finalize it in early 2009. Also, the foundation now has a small staff.

Chernof noted that long-term care reform is very important to the foundation—“no other foundation is really focusing on this exclusively, although many have interest in the topic.” The SCAN Foundation seeks “strong collaborations” with other organizations. The new presidential administration, regardless of which candidate is elected, “will need to address health care reform” in its first year, “and we want to make sure that long-term care reform has a seat at that table.”

When asked what the SCAN Foundation’s geographic limitations are, Chernof told Health Affairs that the foundation “was set up to primarily benefit Californians.” Therefore, the “vast majority of our programmatic grants will be made in California.” The public awareness and policy work of the foundation “will have both a state and national focus,” though. Chernof explained, “Given that federal policy and funding drive so much of long-term care through the Medicare and Medicaid programs, an active national presence is critical.”

Visit http://www.thescanfoundation.org for more information and updates.

News Of Foundations

Accolades:

Modern Healthcare magazine came out with its “100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare—2008” list on 25 August 2008. Included in this pantheon are at least four foundation leaders: Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Drew Altman of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation; Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund; and Risa Lavizzo-Mourey of the RWJF.

Publication announcements:

The Foundation Review, a peer-reviewed, quarterly journal for philanthropy, will be launched in January 2009 by the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), in Grand Rapids, Michigan. According to the paraphrased remarks (in a July 2008 press release) of Teri Behrens, who will be editor-in chief, funders and grantees will be able to “submit and share information about what has worked well [in philanthropy], and just as importantly, what hasn’t worked.” The journal will carry advertising. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation provided a $183,000 grant for “primary promotion and [to] get the first issue published,” Joel Orosz, distinguished professor of philanthropy at GVSU, said in the release. The journal will seek start-up funding from other foundations and hopes to be self-supporting in a few years, he also said. For more information or to sign up now for a free “inaugural” issue, go to http://www.foundationreview.org.

“Foundations and Public Policy Grantmaking,” Julia Coffman (independent consultant), March 2008, 21 pp., http://www.irvine.org/assets/pdf/pubs/philanthropy/PublicPolicy_Coffman.pdf. Funded by the James Irvine Foundation, which funds in the following areas: arts, California perspectives, and youth; it does not have a specific health funding area. Case studies of the California Endowment, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation are included in this white paper on funders and policy grant making.

Presidential Candidates’ Views On Health Coverage

Announcement:

“Rx for Change,” a show hosted by The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, will air on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations the evening of Tuesday, 30 September 2008. (Check your local television listings for the specific time.) The show, a MacNeil/Lehrer Productions special, is funded by the California Endowment, California HealthCare Foundation, Commonwealth Fund, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Missouri Foundation for Health, and Public Welfare Foundation, a Commonwealth spokesperson told Health Affairs. According to an e-alert, the show aims “to inform viewers about the presidential candidates’ plans to broaden health insurance coverage.” Discussants will include Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation; Douglas Holtz-Eakin, senior policy adviser to the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain; Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University; and Neera Tanden, domestic policy director for the Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama. Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, will moderate the discussion.

The Uninsured

Announcement:

“Critical Condition,” part of the P.O.V. series on PBS, will premiere Tuesday, 30 September 2008, as well. (See local listings for time.) In this program, Roger Weisberg, director/producer, “allows ordinary hard-working Americans to tell their harrowing stories of battling critical illnesses without health insurance,” according to a press release. This program, a production of Public Policy Productions Inc., in association with Thirteen/WNET New York and American Documentary/P.O.V., will be shown before “Rx for Change,” mentioned above. Funders of “Critical Condition” include the Annie E. Casey, Nathan Cummings. Charles A. Frueauff, Josiah Macy Jr., Park, Public Welfare, Silverweed, and Trull Foundations; the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan; the New York Community Trust; PBS; and the Spunk Fund. P.O.V. itself is presented by a consortium of public television stations and funded by PBS, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and others.

Related resources:

Cover the Uninsured is a project of the RWJF. It “is a national effort to highlight the fact that too many Americans are living without health insurance and to demand solutions from our nation’s leaders,” says its Web site.

“Household Income Rises, Poverty Rate Unchanged, Number of Uninsured Down,” U.S. Census Bureau press release, 26 August 2008, http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html. This release notes that “the number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007.” Of course, with the challenges facing the U.S. economy, that number may increase in 2008. For more information, visit this site, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/hlthins.html.