Oct 21, 2019

Contact: Stacy Quinn
squinn@petersonhealthcare.org

Innovative Project Builds on Success of State-Level Collaboration Aimed at Curbing Rising Healthcare Costs and Improving Delivery

NEW YORK (October 21, 2019) — The Peterson Center on Healthcare today announced an expansion of its partnership with the State of Rhode Island and Brown University to study healthcare cost trends to improve how care is delivered throughout the state. This second phase of the Rhode Island Healthcare Cost Trends Project is made possible through a $1.3 million grant from the Center to Brown University’s School of Public Health.

The first phase of the project brought together a broad cross-section of Rhode Island healthcare stakeholders to agree on a cost growth goal, informed by a Brown University School of Public Health analysis that identified factors underlying cost increases in the state. Stakeholders, including payers, providers, employers and community representatives, agreed to a growth target aimed at controlling the increasing cost of healthcare, with transparency and shared accountability as key features of the strategy. In February, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo issued an Executive Order aimed at achieving the goal of keeping growth of healthcare costs to 3.2% or less annually.

The second phase of the Rhode Island Healthcare Cost Trends Project will build upon this momentum and lessons learned by supporting the implementation of the cost growth target, including the development of annual, actionable analyses that providers, purchasers and policymakers will use with data-driven information to guide and gauge various performance improvement activities.

“This initiative brings together a community of payers, purchasers and providers to collaborate toward a shared goal of managing and lowering state-wide healthcare spending while maintaining quality,” said Jay Want, Executive Director of the Peterson Center on Healthcare. “We hope that the project will serve as a model to understand how states can take collaborative action to build healthcare analytics and actionable reporting capabilities, leading to better performance overall.”

Collaborating with partners and grantees to improve healthcare data transparency is one of the Center’s key strategic priorities. “Transparent healthcare performance data is an essential driver to motivate change in the U.S. healthcare system and a necessary component of a well-functioning healthcare market,” said Want. “Specifically, access to information on price, utilization and quality is critical to inform care delivery transformation and value-based purchasing.”

The Center’s transparency initiatives focus on increasing access to actionable and timely data to inform healthcare decisions, and combine healthcare performance analysis with action-oriented stakeholder engagement.

For more information about the Peterson Center on Healthcare, visit petersonhealthcare.org.

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About the Peterson Center on Healthcare
The Peterson Center on Healthcare is a non-profit organization dedicated to making higher quality, more affordable healthcare a reality for all Americans. The organization is working to transform U.S. healthcare into a high-performance system by finding innovative solutions that improve quality and lower costs, and accelerating their adoption on a national scale. Established by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Center collaborates with stakeholders across the healthcare system and engages in grant-making, partnerships, and research.