The Greater Boston Aligning Forces for Quality (GBAF4Q) alliance announced this week that is has been selected by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to participate in Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q), an unprecedented effort to lift the quality of health care provided in select communities nationwide.

GBAF4Q is a multi-stakeholder collaborative led by Massachusetts Health Quality Partners and the Eastern Massachusetts Healthcare Initiative and is supported by more than 35 Boston-area organizations, including Health Care For All. The Boston initiative joins 16 other regions to improve the quality of health care at hospitals and in doctors’ offices, reduce racial and ethnic disparities in care, and provide models for implementing national reform.

The work will be grounded on the core principle that to transform the health care system, everyone who gives care, gets care and pays for care must work together. GBAF4Q will focus on four key areas:

1. Performance measurement and public reporting: using common standards to measure the quality of care that doctors and hospitals deliver to patients and making that information available to the public.
2. Consumer engagement: encouraging patients to be active managers of their health care, and make informed choices about their doctors and hospitals.
3. Quality improvement: implementing techniques and protocols that doctors, nurses and staff in hospitals and clinics can follow to raise the level of care they deliver to patients.
4. Health Equity: reducing disparities in care for patients of difference races and ethnicities.

Specifically, GBAF4Q will center its work on reducing preventable emergency department visits and associated admissions. Although health care is a national problem, health care is delivered locally, and fixing it requires local action. GBAF4Q hopes to mobilize teams of stakeholders representing the people who get care, give care, and pay for care to rebuild our health care system so it works better for everyone involved.
-Mehreen Butt