Overview

Rewarding Results is a new $8.8 million initiative of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California HealthCare Foundation to improve health care quality, particularly for persons with chronic conditions. The objective is to align incentives with high-quality health care.

Rewarding Results offers grants and technical assistance to employers, health plans, state Medicaid/SCHIP agencies, and other select purchasers to design, implement, and evaluate payment programs and non-financial incentives to reward physicians and hospitals for higher quality. It is administered by the National Health Care Purchasing Institute, part of AcademyHealth.

Organizations that meet program requirements may apply for grants of up to $1 million each over a three-year period to plan, implement, and evaluate demonstration projects of provider payment systems and non-financial incentives that strongly support improvements in quality.

Rewarding Results released a Call for Proposals (CFP) on March 21, 2002. The CFP and other key program information is available online at www.nhcpi.net. Grant proposals are due May 31, 2002, with decisions expected in August 2002. Grant award decisions will be made by the Foundations with advice from a National Advisory Committee of 15 respected health care experts.

An overall evaluation of Rewarding Results is co-funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Prospective evaluators should visit www.ahrq.gov for information on applying to evaluate Rewarding Results.

Rewarding Results offers an array of technical assistance to grantees and, as resources permit, others designing and implementing quality incentives. Technical assistance will include workshops, consulting services, how-to publications, web seminars, and an annual collaborative on incentives modeled after the Institute of Healthcare Improvement's successful breakthrough series. In addition, our colleagues at the Center for Health Care Strategies offer Medicaid/SCHIP-specific technical assistance on performance incentives to state and Medicaid/SCHIP health plans.

Organizations requesting additional information about Rewarding Results may contact Sarah R. Callahan, Deputy Director at results@academyhealth.org.