RAND Center of Excellence on Health System Performance

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The RAND Center of Excellence on Health System Performance is focused on identifying, classifying, tracking and comparing health systems in today's rapidly changing health care market. We do this to pinpoint the attributes that promote rapid implementation of evidence-based medicine into routine medical practice — in order to improve quality, lower costs, and create better outcomes for patients.

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Policy Insights

These short, non-technical summaries are intended for decisionmakers, with a focus on policy-relevant findings from our published, peer-reviewed studies. For the interested reader, links to the published papers are provided within the summaries.

  • Quality, cost, efficiency and speed graph on blackboard, photo by Warchi/Getty Images

    What Have We Learned About Measuring Health System Performance?

    The absence of a consistent definition of what constitutes high performance, and consensus about how to measure it, hinders our ability to compare, motivate, and reward health systems based on performance. This synthesis piece presents RAND research findings and lessons learned about measuring health system performance.

  • Looking up from the ground at skyscrapers, with a sunset glow, photo by bluejayphoto/Getty Images

    What Have We Learned About Health Care Consolidation?

    Researchers from RAND’s Center of Excellence on Health System Performance scrutinized clinically integrated networks as part of a larger study to identify the characteristics of high performing health systems. This synthesis piece presents RAND research findings and lessons learned about consolidating health systems.

  • Hospital bed in a hospital corridor, photo by PeopleImages/Getty Images

    What Have We Learned About the Economic Effects of Vertical Integration?

    In a series of studies, a research team from the RAND Center of Excellence on Health System Performance explored trends in vertical integration and its implications by examining how it affects referrals and spending for high volume services such as diagnostic imaging, laboratory testing, outpatient surgical procedures (such as knee replacement), and other outpatient procedures (such as colonoscopy).

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Contact Us

The Center is led by Cheryl Damberg, principal senior researcher and RAND Distinguished Chair in Healthcare Payment Policy, and Susan Ridgely, senior health policy researcher.

For more information about the Center, contact HealthSystemsCenter@rand.org or send us a message using this form.