Avalere Partners with Leading Health Care Foundation, Provider Associations, and Advocacy Groups to Improve Conversations About Costs Between Patients and Clinicians

Summary

A supplement to Annals was just published that includes research on how to help physicians talk with their patients about costs of care, including a commentary co-authored with Avalere.

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Since 2015, Avalere has worked with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the American College of Physicians (ACP), America’s Essential Hospitals, the National Patient Advocate Foundation, and 8 research grantees to conduct research on how to facilitate conversations between patients and clinicians around the expected costs of their care. This research is particularly important in the context of increasing healthcare costs and out-of-pocket spending for patients, as well as the broader policy environment that is calling for greater healthcare price transparency.

Avalere has supported the RWJF Cost Conversation Projects in several key ways, as summarized below.

In an Annals commentary that Avalere co-authored with ACP, we outline the common barriers that clinicians face in having conversations about costs with their patients and point to specific resources that clinicians can use to support these conversations.

Summary of Avalere’s Support for the RWJF Cost Conversation Projects
Summary of Activity	Deliverables / Further Details
Conducted background research on the barriers encountered to holding conversations about costs, and interviewed two-dozen experts for their opinions on how to facilitate these conversations	Infographic
Supported RWJF in issuing 2 calls for proposals (CFPs) and selecting 8 finalist research grantees	Details on the CFPs and the finalist research grantees
Observed the grantees’ projects in action, held interviews with key stakeholders at each site, and summarized the key lessons learned across grantees	Health Affairs blog post
Worked with RWJF grantees and America’s Essential Hospitals to develop 7 action briefs intended to share the lessons learned about this work with a clinical audience	7 action briefs

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