Blumenthal is a top shelf operator and its terrific to see him leading the Fund on new work which includes constructive disruption of the US health system. His opening lines carry a finely crafted, powerful and persuasive message:

“Like every American, like every person on this globe, I treasure the access I have to health care. I know I’m privileged, but every time my family members or I are sick, we are taking risks, that we are entering a system that doesn’t function as well as it should. As a primary care provider, as a scholar, as a professor, I’ve been interested in the same things the Commonwealth Fund is interested in. A high performing health system and vulnerable populations.

We have a system that’s excessively costly, inadequate in quality. Poor results with many other countries on quality metrics. We spend far too much on health care – $2.7 trillion when no other country comes close to that.

It’s important that the most vulnerable access care, because in some ways, they are the canary in the mine. Their vulnerability highlights a general vulnerability.

The Commonwealth fund is dedicated to producing the right information at the right time to make decisions better and make our health care system better.

A high performing health system will be a health system in which the providers of care, the clinicians, doctors and nurses, enjoy their work. It matters to me not just as a policy maker, and a scholar, but as a father, as both my children are physicians in training, and I hope we can leave them a system they can truly enjoy working in.

[….]

The last area, and somewhat new, is what we’re calling breakthrough innovations, which are opportunities to fundamentally transform the system through innovative approaches to health care delivery”

 

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Annual-Reports/2013-Annual-Report.aspx?omnicid=20