Feature
Watch the Video, Earn the Credits
Learn how to improve care transitions and prevent avoidable hospital readmissions, and pick up nursing and medical education con-ed credits.
Read more
Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q)
Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) is the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s signature effort to lift the overall quality of health care in targeted communities, reduce racial and ethnic disparities and provide models for national reform.
AF4Q asks the people who get care, give care and pay for care to work together toward common, fundamental objectives to lead to better care. The 16 geographically, demographically, and economically diverse communities participating in AF4Q together cover 12.5 percent of the U.S. population.
Visit forces4quality.org to learn more.
Contact Information
Aligning Forces for Quality National Program Office
Email: info@forces4quality.org
Phone: (202) 994-8642
Community Partnerships
Improving Quality and Equity
As many as 85 percent of primary care physicians feel that it is as important to address patients’ resource and social constraints as it is to treat their medical conditions. This brief outlines considerations for practices looking to develop partnerships with community organizations.
Health Games
AF4Q Games to Generate Data Challenge Announces Finalists
A competition among technology innovators is exploring how gaming can generate useful data on health care quality. Five teams with concepts ranging from a health care fantasy league to a self-help tool for people with anxiety and depression have been chosen as finalists in the Aligning Forces for Quality $200,000 Games to Generate Data Challenge. The finalists will now turn their concepts into working game applications, while competing for the grand prize. The games will allow players to collaborate or compete to improve their personal health while bettering the health of their community.
Engaging Employees & Reducing Costs
Shared Decision-Making and Benefit Design
Shared decision-making (SDM) involves incorporating the patient's perspective and values into decisions about treatment in collaboration with the clinician when there is no “right” course of treatment based on available evidence. SDM has drawn attention in recent years as the value placed on patient engagement has grown and as research has found that well-informed patients tend to choose less invasive—and less costly—treatment alternatives.
Care Transitions & Coordination
Care Across Settings: Challenges, Successes, and Opportunities
All too often, the weakest link in a patient’s care is the transition from one setting to another. To overcome these challenges, the 16 AF4Q communities are defining the obstacles to improving care transitions and designing initiatives to combat them.
Patient Engagement
Engaging Patients in Improving Ambulatory Care
The “Engaging Patients in Improving Ambulatory Care” toolkit features videos and an extensive compendium of adaptable resources from Maine, Oregon, and Humboldt County, Calif., on partnering with patients and families in improving primary care.
Webinar
Webinar: Insights from Aligning Forces for Quality
In a recent webinar, local leaders and national experts explained how different Aligning Forces communities are making fundamental changes to enhance care.
Transparency
Measuring and publicly reporting on the quality and cost of care physicians and hospitals provide is crucial to improving the quality and lowering the cost of care nationwide. Our directory provides access to publicly available, free reports with information about the process of delivering care (for example, did patients get all the recommended care?), actual outcome for patients (for example, did patients die or have to return to the hospital?), what patients said in surveys about their experience with physicians or hospitals, and/or cost.
Aligning Forces: Six Years Later
Driving Health Care Transformation in Communities Across America 2012
Can bringing together the people who give care, get care, and pay for care improve quality in America? RWJF’s 16 Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) communities are showing that it can.
This program update from AF4Q discusses and provides examples of the transformative partnerships formed and work achieved since the program launched six years ago.