Re>Think Health, an initiative of the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, proudly supported the symposium, "How Do They Do That? Low-Cost High-Quality Healthcare in America," held in Washington, DC on July 21. The session featured teams from ten high-performing Hospital Referral Regions (HRRs) that gathered to share best practices and build awareness around successful models for high-quality, low-cost healthcare. Led by Dr. Don Berwick, President & CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement; Dr. Elliott Fisher, Director, Center for Health Care Research and Reform, Dartmouth Institute for Health Care Policy and Clinical Practice; Dr. Atul Gawande, Surgeon, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Writer, The New Yorker; and Dr. Mark McClellan, Director, Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution; and with generous financial support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, participants examined the ways in which these groups deliver high quality healthcare more cost-effectively than their counterparts throughout the country. For additional reading see "10 Steps to Better Health Care" in The New York Times.

The ten HRR teams participating at "How Do They Do That?" met distinct performance criteria on both cost and quality. Each region had to be in the lowest 25th percentile for Medicare spending per enrollee and/or intensity of care provided (including time spent and physician services delivered in the hospital) or having significantly reduced their rank of total Medicare spending over time. HRRs that met the cost criteria also had to rank in the top 50 percent on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Compare Survey composite quality score.

Dr. Berwick and Dr. Fisher are founding members of Re>Think Health whose mission is to achieve better health, better care, and lower costs for all.