HHS Secretary proposes creating local health care collaborative to provide cost, quality reports of health care providers

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt on Wednesday at a breakfast with reporters announced a new proposal to establish local collaboratives to provide public reports on the cost and quality of health care providers as part of an effort to increase health care transparency, CQ HealthBeat reports.

Under the proposal, HHS would select qualified collaboratives -- independent, not-for-profit organizations administered at the local level -- which potentially could be linked under a national system of collaboratives administered by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

As part of the collaboratives, local physicians, nurses, hospitals and other providers would partner with health plans, employers, unions and other health care purchasers to publish reports that consumers could use to compare the cost and quality of health care.

HHS has requested $4 million in fiscal year 2008 to establish and operate the collaboratives.

Leavitt said that the collaboratives would begin to publish reports on a limited number of medical procedures within two years and that the national system of collaboratives would form in five years.

Separately, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on Thursday announced a two-year, $115 million addition to a program established to help community coalitions improve the quality of care provided for chronic diseases in physician offices, clinics and other outpatient settings.

Under the program, RWJF will award grants to coalitions in as many as 20 communities that will seek to develop measures to help health care providers improve quality of care and publicly report their performance (Carey, CQ HealthBeat, 2/28).