FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 15, 2009
CONTACT: Rebecca Alper
NJPIRG Program Associate
Work: 609-394-8155
Mobile: 617-840-5999
Health Care Innovators – Better Care, Lower Costs
WASHNGTON, Dec. 15 – Across the country, hundreds of clinics, hospitals and other health care providers have been working hard to improve care while they also rein in the skyrocketing costs. Health reform supporters, have sought to craft health reform legislation that would encourage just this kind of innovation.
But so far, only a handful of examples – notably Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic or Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Health– have been cited as models.
To ensure that the story of other health care innovators are heard, U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) researchers contacted health care innovators in several areas of the country.
A resulting briefing paper, Health Care Innovators and Health Care Reform (PDF), available on the U.S. PIRG website, details case studies of five such health care innovators’ achievement of lower costs through higher quality. After each case study, the authors explore provisions of health reform legislation before Congress that would encourage or replicate those reforms.
“For communities around America struggling with rising costs and uneven delivery of health care, the innovators discussed in this report offer something truly valuable: a path to lower costs by improving, not sacrificing, quality of care,” said Rebecca Alper, NJPIRG Program Associate.
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NJPIRG, is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization. For more information visit http://njpirg.org.
U.S. PIRG, is the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups. For more information visit http://www.uspirg.org.
Briefing-Paper_Health-Care-Innovators-and-Health-Care-Reform.pdf