Each year, we share all that we have accomplished together and our goals for the future in our Annual Report. I would like to highlight a few numbers that help tell the story of our collaborative work in 2021:
- We welcomed 21 new member organizations and now have 121 member organizations working across 10 councils.
- We offered 17 virtual events on critical health care topics.
- Our COVID-19 Action Plan was downloaded 2,000+ times.
- Our Mayors Wellness Campaign awarded 22 Healthy Town Awards to mayors advancing health and wellness in their communities.
You can learn more in our Annual Report. Another number we’re all excited about is the number of years the Quality Institute has been working with our members to advance health care safety, quality, and affordability: 25!
We began in 1997 as the Payers Coalition, a group of union funds and large businesses that purchased benefits for their members or employees and their families. These early founders were deeply concerned about rapidly rising health care costs as well as the quality of the health care they purchased.
Their concerns were highlighted in the so-called Jencks studies, a serious of influential reports on health care quality that ranked New Jersey low on Quality Indicator Averages. Another important study was the Institute of Medicine’s Crossing the Quality Chasm, a seminal report on patient safety that sounded the alarm on the number of people dying each year because of medical errors that were entirely preventable.
Finally, our founders were distressed that there was almost no publicly available data — let alone consumer-friendly data — to guide consumers and payers toward the safest and highest quality health care.
The Payers Coalition looked around and found no entity in New Jersey fighting for health care quality. They decided to take on the battle and created the Quality Institute, which has been working inside and outside the health care system for 25 years to improve quality, safety, affordability — and transparency.
Throughout the rest of this year, we’ll highlight our success in many areas and outline how much things have changed. We’ll highlight our founders and so many others: board members, leadership council, foundations, member organizations, state and federal public servants, and health care leaders.
I hope you can join us at our May 18 All Council Conference, where you will learn more about our celebration of 25 years. And we’ll end the year with a special event on December 8. Please mark your calendars and join us in celebrating a quarter of century of accomplishments.