The Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI) www.nrhi.org, is a national organization consisting of more than 35 member Regional Health Improvement Collaboratives (RHIC) across the U.S working to transform the healthcare delivery system. Being part of NRHI enables RHICs to work with each other and advance regional innovations at a national level.
The RHIC initiative driving affordability in healthcare titled “Total Cost of Care Phase II Accelerates Healthcare Affordability” is trying to improve patient care and trying to reduce the per capita cost of healthcare.
The RHIC initiative, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation www.rejf.org, involves developing five pioneering pilot RHICs to analyze and report information. These pilot RHICs include the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (Colorado), Maine Health Management Coalition, Midwest Health Initiative (Missouri), Minnesota Community Measurement, and the Oregon Health Care Quality Corporation.
The five pioneering RHICs have been joined by additional regions to standardize how they report cost information. These six additional regions include HealthInsight Utah, Maryland Health Care Commission, The Health Collaborative (OHIO), the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Washington Health Alliance, and the Wisconsin Health Information Organization.
The regional collaboratives are sharing information and experiences such as costs and insights. Knowledge sharing eliminates the need to start from scratch and supports each regional partner’s ability to design reporting tools around local and national stakeholder input.
The last step is to use the information to compel fundamental change. The data analyzed at the local and regional level, and prepared for national aggregation will enable regional partners and stakeholders to produce reports and compare their results locally, regionally, and nationally.