Dr David Blumenthal on the Origins of "The Playbook"

After realizing that improving care for the sickest, most expensive patients is crucial to a high-performing healthcare system, 5 philanthropic organizations joined forces to create “The Playbook: Better Care for People With Complex Needs,” said David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, president of The Commonwealth Fund.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What is the purpose of the collaboration between The Commonwealth Fund, SCAN Foundation, The John A. Hartford Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Peterson Center on Healthcare to create The Playbook?

The purpose is to help the country solve one of the most important looming healthcare problems that we have at the current time, and that is how to take better care of the part of the population that is sickest, most in need, and most expensive—and growing all the time because of demographic trends. We believe that you cannot make our healthcare system high-performing unless we take better care of this population.

We started working on that 3 or 4 years ago at The Commonwealth Fund, and then we discovered that some of our colleague philanthropies were also interested in this work. We decided we could do more together than we could separately, so that was really the reason that we came together around this problem.