ReThink Health New Jersey
When does being #1 mean we have to think differently?
New Jersey has the nation’s most expensive health care, but its quality is only average. This disparity between costs and results has many roots, including history and culture. Nevertheless, the state’s economic future will depend on how we govern our health resources. ReThink Health New Jersey is working to address the unique challenges facing New Jersey by raising awareness about the current unsustainable system, catalyzing opportunities for redesign, and empowering leaders across traditional boundaries to act.
Employing a multi-pronged approach, ReThink Health New Jersey, a project of ReThink Health, is examining how to raise awareness among New Jersey’s stakeholders about the need and opportunity for health system change and how to help create the conditions for innovation in the state. The project is working with a growing list of partners to stimulate new conversation and to develop new models of health and care. Based on a research report, “When Being #1 Means We Have to Think Differently: The Future of Health Care in New Jersey” prepared by the Foundation, specific projects are now being developed that involve both local and statewide collaborations. In partnership with the Nicholson Foundation, the Rippel Foundation has also seeded the only affinity group of health funders in New Jersey. The group is committed to sharing, exploring, and, where appropriate, collaborating to enhance the impact of health innovation and philanthropy.
The Problem
Among the problems facing New Jersey health care are deep structural issues. Behaviors of key actors and institutions, which are in a position to influence how health is achieved through high-quality care and reasonable cost, are influenced by system incentives not aligned with desired goals. Provision of and access to care has become a market in which providers compete with one another to offer services and facilities that drive revenue and maintain their dominance. Consumers use health care services to the greatest extent possible because payers will foot the bill. Those without access to ongoing care continue to exert pressure on the system through habitual use of hospital emergency departments which do not improve health and where cost of care is at its highest. Rather than serving as an organizing principle, efforts to promote health and well-being are relegated to the back-end of the health system’s process.
To effect meaningful system redesign of New Jersey’s health system, stakeholders must work to create a new vision of what health and care should look like in the state. The whole system must be considered as a means of addressing such critical questions as:
- What are the outcomes a health system should aspire to produce?
- How can we reduce competition and better cooperate to deliver health care more efficiently?
- How will emerging technology shape the delivery of care and the institutions that deliver it?
- How can we think about making care more accessible and in different ways?
- How can we improve the health of the population and reduce the need for care?