Clarifying Feasible Procedures for Reinvesting Health Care Cost Savings

Efforts to promote significant change in the U.S. health system are underway in a variety of settings and along multiple dimensions. The goals of these efforts can be categorized according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Triple Aim: to improve the experience of care, improve population health, and reduce the per capita cost of care.

Innovative efforts may be funded internally by care providers or suppported through government or philanthropic grants, issuance of bonds, or other sources that generally focus on the initial investment needed to create change.

Yet the challenge of sustainable financing beyond this initial investment can undermine even the most ambitious endeavors, and, as a result, innovators may produce short-term effects but rarely achieve sustained, long-term influence. Most innovations are not yet implemented at the scale, intensity, or duration needed to alter long-term health system performance.