Focusing Health-Care Philanthropy on the Grass Roots

Donors who support health-care causes should direct more of their attention — and dollars — to ensuring that medical care is implemented efficiently and skillfully at the local level, writes Dana Variano on the PhilanthroMedia blog.

Too many doctors and clinics, Ms. Variano writes, subject their patients to “rushed appointments, long waiting periods, and sloppy preparation techniques,” which “contribute to a growing number of citizens fearing health care and pushing back against getting proper medical attention. As the 2007 Annual Report of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation states, ‘more than half [of patients] fear something bad will happen to them if they go into the hospital. Research into medical errors says their fears are justified.’”

The blogger cites a study by Peter Pronovost, a physician at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in Baltimore. Dr. Pronovost compiled a simple checklist of activities that should be conducted before any procedure or exam, then sent it to colleagues and encouraged them to use it before each appointment.

“Staggering results were found for those hospitals who adopted the policy,” writes Ms. Variano, who quotes the doctor’s report: “participating Michigan hospitals estimated that within 18 months the checklists saved 1,500 lives and an estimated $175-million.”

If such efforts were more common, writes Ms. Variano, “an added side effect of this process will be a population that looks positively upon their health care providers, and will be more likely to champion additional changes to the health care system, on both a large and small scale.”

Dr. Pronovost’s work, the blogger writes, should raise a challenge to donors and to voters, who tend to focus on reforming the health care system on the macro level, focusing on health insurance issues.

“ The purpose of health care is to support and strengthen the population,” Ms. Variano writes. “What better way to begin this process than in the communities, where people can really experience some immediate, important changes.”