ACTION III Partnerships

Abt Associates ACTION III Team

PI: Andrea Hassol, andrea_hassol@abtassoc.com
Additional ACTION III contact: Sarah Shoemaker-Hunt, Sarah_Shoemaker-Hunt@abtassoc.com
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: Our partnership is broad and we share an interest in improving care coordination, quality, and efficiency across the entire care continuum. Experts in quality measurement and public reporting, payment incentives and value-based purchasing, care coordination and care pathway redesign, and patient health literacy and navigation, all focus on the entire care continuum and transitions across settings, from primary and urgent care through acute inpatient care and long-term and postacute care.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: AL, MA, NY, PA.

Partnership Composition

American Institutes for Research (AIR)

PI: Yael Harris, yharris@air.org
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: Partnership with extensive delivery system research experience, access to diverse health care systems, access to and ability to integrate data from multiple and extensive data systems, and ability to leverage multiple partners for wide spread of evidence-based innovations.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: AK, AZ, CA, CO, DE, FL, IA, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MI, MN, MS, MT, NC, NM, NV, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TX, UT, WA, WI.

Partnership Composition

Billings Clinic—Center for Clinical Translational Research a.k.a. The Quality Commons

PI: Holly Gracia, hgarcia@billingsclinic.org
Additional ACTION III contact: Jeannine Brant, JBrant@billingsclinic.org
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: We will improve health of Americans by using our collective wisdom, relationships, diverse capabilities, and a complexity science framework to solve intractable health care challenges and transform patient care. Billings Clinic, the Prime Organization, has a deep connection to this mission. The Clinic strives to be a national leader in quality, patient safety, and value and recognizes that a culture of innovation and true integration of health services research into the fabric of the system are critical to achieving this leadership position. Driving this work is a deep commitment to improving health care of patients served by the Clinic and inspiring advances in health care policy and delivery across the country.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: ME, MN, MT, PA, VT, WA, WV.

Partnership Composition

Health Research and Educational Trust

PI: Andrew Shin, ashin@aha.org
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: Improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of the health care system through applied research, demonstration projects, and large-scale implementation efforts.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: All plus DC and PR.

Partnership Composition

Intermountain Healthcare—Health Care Delivery in ACTION III

PI: Kim Brunisholz, Kim.Brunisholz@imail.org
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: Our network is a delivery-system-based learning laboratory, offering a national cross-section of the industry. Our network is built on longstanding collaborative work that leverages the High Value Healthcare Collaborative to engage members beyond the core partner subset. We also use an executed master collaborative agreement, an established data trust, and a centralized Institutional Review Board to engage a preexisting and far-reaching dissemination channel for accelerated spread. Our network draws on more than 95 expert investigators in quality improvement, patient safety, implementation science, program evaluation, and finance to support evidence-based practice and care innovations. We aim to serve as a model delivery-system-based network to improve the health of those we serve through continued advancement of our services.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: AK, AZ, CA, CO, FL, HI, ID, MN, MT, NH, OR, TX, UT, WA, WI.

Partnership Composition

John Snow, Inc.—The Safety Net Partnership

PI: Susan Grantham, Ph.D., sgrantham@jsi.com
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: The purpose of the Safety Net Partnership is to improve the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of primary care and behavioral health services delivery and transitions across all providers to populations who are socioeconomically disadvantaged or have difficulty accessing or engaging in health care. This is achieved by conducting field-based research to develop interventions, pilot test interventions in active practice settings, implement interventions, spread evidence-based interventions, and conduct analysis and assessment. The partnership also works to improve the nationwide safety net system and health services delivery overall by sharing and disseminating knowledge gained through this research.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: CA, MA, MD, ME, NH.

Partnership Composition

Johns Hopkins University Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality

PI: Jill Marsteller, jmarste2@jhu.edu
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: We partner with patients, their loved ones, and all interested parties to end preventable harm, continuously improve patient outcomes and experience, and eliminate waste in health care.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: MD.

Partnership Composition

The Lewin Group Partnership

PI: Nicolas Stettler-Davis, nicolas.stettler@lewin.com
Additional ACTION III contact: Charlie Bruetman, charlie.bruetman@lewin.com
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: The Lewin Group's mission of improving health and human services policy and practice through research and knowledge acquisition and contributing to the effective and efficient delivery of health and human services aligns with ACTION III's four priorities of health care quality, safety, accessibility, and efficiency. The Lewin Group Partnership focuses on:

1. Understanding the needs of children and other priority populations, such as underserved people, and improving the reach of effective health care interventions to these critical populations.
2. Integrating the diverse perspectives of health systems, payers, providers, and patients to improve quality, safety, accessibility, and efficiency of care.

States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: AK, DC, OH, OK, VA, WA.

Partnership Composition

MedStar ACTION III Network

PI: Christine Goeschel, RN, FAAN, M.P.A., M.P.S., Sc.D., chris.a.goeschel@medstar.net
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: We invited ACTION III partners based on our belief in the wisdom of diverse groups working together, our commitment to scientifically sound yet feasible interventions to improve health care, and our existing professional relationships. Our network has extensive experience in systems engineering, particularly the subdiscipline of system safety engineering, which includes industrial systems engineering, human factors engineering, and resilience engineering. Resources include the State University of New York at Buffalo Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and MedStar Health's National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare, with engineers on staff and systems engineering leaders on faculty from around the most prominent systems engineering centers in the United States. MedStar Health hospitals employ, at the local level, dozens of industrial systems engineers who work on efficiency and safety issues. MedStar has a large and growing ambulatory practice base, and risk management, quality, safety, and human factors leaders work closely to make the system safer. Our provider partner in Michigan also benefits from a large patient safety center with engineering and high-reliability strength.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: DC, MD, VA.

Partnership Composition

NORC at the University of Chicago

PI: Prashila Dullabh, Dullabh-prashila@norc.org
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: NORC's partnership comprises organizations that collectively offer the substantive, technical, and methodological expertise, diversity in functional capabilities, scale and capacity, geographic coverage, diversity in care settings, and populations (including priority populations) relevant under ACTION III. NORC and its partners have extensive experience in field-based research related to improving access to and delivery of high-quality, efficient, and affordable health care services. We offer AHRQ a partnership with a deep bench in health information technology and informatics, access to a wide array of clinical and administrative data sources, and extensive experience in health economics, access, cost benefit, and affordability.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: AZ, CA, DC, FL, GA, HI, ID,  IL, IN, MI, NC, NY, PA, TX, WA.

Partnership Composition

* Payer nonprofit organization that provides health care utilization and cost data for Americans covered by private insurance.

RTI International

PI: Alison Banger, abanger@rti.org
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: Our partnership goals are consistent with RTI's mission: to improve the human condition by turning knowledge into practice. Through this partnership, we seek to assist AHRQ in the development of new knowledge and translation and diffusion of that knowledge to practice-based settings.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: CT, IL, MA, NC, NY, TN.

Partnership Composition

University of Colorado—Denver: Colorado ACTION Partnership

PI: Mark Gritz, mark.gritz@ucdenver.edu
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: The Colorado ACTION Partnership (CAP) is composed of a comprehensive university, health delivery systems, organizations of affiliated health care providers, independent health care providers, researchers, implementation and quality improvement scientists, and communications experts. CAP's mission is to integrate practice-based research and implementation science into practice-based implementation research. Our partnership is focused in the Great Plains-Rocky Mountain region but we have national reach through our partnership with the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network and other research partners. CAP's goals are to rapidly perform practice-based implementation research Our partnership has developed a deep understanding and commitment to integrating practice-based research. We have built on our long and successful history of establishing and working with practice-based research networks and other health care delivery systems to develop and translate research findings into health care practice through the active participation of practitioners, patients, and other stakeholders. We also conduct research in real-world settings to understand the processes through which practices and organizations adopted new approaches and the context in which these innovations resulted in sustained changes.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: CO, IA, MN, ND, NE, OK, SD, WY.

Partnership Composition

Westat Partnership

PI: Russ Mardon, RussMardon@Westat.com

Operational Lead: Laurie May, LaurieMay@westat.com
Partnership Mission, Niche, and/or Goals: Westat developed its team with strong measurement and analytic capabilities, and representation of diverse, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and understudied populations in urban and rural regional areas.
States in Which Health Care Provider Organizations Are Located: MI, MS, PA.

Partnership Composition

Select for the Accelerating Change and Transformation in Organizations and Networks III (ACTION III) fact sheet.