Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation: Greater Value Portfolio Grants

The Greater Value Portfolio grant program will fund research projects for the purpose of creating new approaches to achieving a higher value healthcare system. The goal is to test new approaches and tools that organizations can readily use to improve the value of the healthcare they provide to their patients and communities.

Symptoms of poor healthcare value are high and contribute to rising healthcare costs, unwarranted variation in prices, unacceptable variation in quality, and a lack of transparency in both price and outcomes. Investigators conducting research that expect to develop actionable solutions to one or more of these symptoms of low value healthcare are encouraged to apply to the Greater Value Portfolio program.

Eligible topics include research concerning the following strategies:

• Increase the value of traditionally high-cost procedures through mechanisms such as medical tourism or specialty treatment centers
• Reduce routine treatments, tests, and screenings for patients for whom the potential harms (including financial harm) outweigh potential benefits
• Provide consumers with the tools to make decisions about their healthcare that are based on value in addition to other patient-centered factors
• Encourage providers and their patients with serious illnesses to engage in difficult conversations about preferences and trade-offs related to alternative treatment options
• Identify, highlight, and resolve structural disincentives to greater value or inefficiencies within systems or across healthcare settings
• Create economic models that address current financial disincentives for systemic change (i.e., paying for current programs with future savings or paying for social determinants of health with the savings from lower clinical services)
• Worthy, inexpensive clinical interventions that are currently underused

Amount: Three awards of up to $600,000 each will be made. Projects will span three to five years.

Eligibility: Investigators at tax-exempt research institutions in the U.S.

Link: http://donaghue.org/grant-programs/grant-opportunities/

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