Aligning Forces for Quality

Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q)

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Aligning Forces for Quality: the Regional Market Project is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) designed to help communities across the country improve the quality of health care within their geographic region. The $25-million program is part of RWJF's continuing effort to close the gap between the quality of health care that Americans now receive and what the health care system is capable of delivering. The foundational premise of Aligning Forces for Quality is that no single person, group or profession can improve the quality of care without the support of others. Maine is one of fifteen communities selected from across the country to participate in this initiative.

AF4Q in Maine is led by Quality Counts in close partnership with the Maine Health Management Coalition and the Maine Quality Forum. These partners work with numerous stakeholder groups including consumers, healthcare providers, purchasers, insurers, and public health organizations to improve healthcare by aligning efforts within and across three areas, or “forces”: quality improvement, public reporting and consumer engagement, with a particular focus on reducing disparities in healthcare across the state. (READ MORE)

QC's Consumer Engagement Framework

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QC's Consumer Engagement Framework

Performance Measurement & Public Reporting

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What is Quality Healthcare?

“Good quality health care means doing the right thing at the right time, in the right way, for the right person and getting the best results.” (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). The Institute of Medicine further defines quality in their "Crossing the Quality Chasm" report as care that is safe, timely, effective, efficient, and equitable.

Reducing Disparities/Promoting Equity

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What is “Disparity”
“Disparity” in healthcare means that not everyone gets the same quality of care. Research shows the quality of health care in America is lower than it should be for many patients, especially those from certain racial, ethnic, and language backgrounds. Many studies have shown that African Americans and Hispanics are likely to get a lower standard of care than people who are white—even when health coverage, income levels, education, and other social and economic factors are equal.

Reducing healthcare disparities is an important area of focus...

Consumer Engagement

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What is a Consumer?

One of the major goals of Quality Counts is to help patients and consumers to take a more active role in their care and to make better healthcare choices. There are three goals for the consumer engagement work:

· Consumers understand what quality is

· Consumers use quality information to make healthcare choices

· Consumers become more involved in managing their health

Data Collection on Race, Ethnicity and Language Webinar

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The following webinar is titled "Data Collection on Race, Ethnicity and Language". Please be sure to register for this webinar as we need to collect information on those who watch it for our Aligning Forces for Quality project.

Thank you!