Princeton, N.J.—The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has selected 10 community-based health care alliances to participate in the Doctor Project, an innovative $1.3 million project to help consumers better understand and access information on the quality of health care local physicians provide.

The project provides participants with resources to develop community reports on the quality of care that local physicians deliver. The organizations will develop—or work with existing—websites that are consumer-friendly and trusted within the local community to publish the reports. Communities will also publish their results in special issues of Consumer Reports magazine.

Organizations selected to participate in the Doctor Project include:

• Common Table Health Alliance (Memphis, Tenn.)
• Greater Detroit Area Health Council (Detroit, Mich.)
• Healthcare Collaborative of Greater Columbus (Columbus, Ohio)
• Integrated Healthcare Association​ (California)
• Maine Health Management Coalition (Maine)
• Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (Massachusetts)
• MN Community Measurement (Minnesota)
• The Health Collaborative (Cincinnati, Ohio)
• Washington Health Alliance (Washington State)
• Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (Wisconsin)

“It is often easier for Americans to get restaurant reviews than to get reliable and easy-to-understand information about the care their doctors provide,” said Susan Mende, BSN, MPH, senior program officer at RWJF. “Through the Doctor Project, we are aiming to change that by creating sustainable reporting systems that are essential to building a national Culture of Health for generations to come.”

In addition to leading local efforts in Minnesota, MN Community Measurement (MNCM), a national leader in reporting information on the quality of care doctors provide, manages the Doctor Project through a grant from RWJF. The project builds on the success of a pilot initiative in three communities that are part of Aligning Forces for Quality, the Foundation’s signature effort to lift the overall quality of health care in targeted communities. Aligning Forces alliances in Minnesota, Massachusetts and Wisconsin previously worked with Consumer Reports to produce extremely popular magazine inserts that focused on the care local physicians provide.

“Health care delivery is a local issue, and producing the reports that are at the core of the Doctor Project will require key players in local communities to work together,” said Jim Chase, president of MN Community Measurement. “The regional health collaboratives announced today have long track records of making this happen—successfully bringing the people who give care, get care and pay for care together to address pressing health care issues in their communities.”

Consumer Reports expects to publish results from the Doctor Project beginning in 2015.