AF4Q 4.0 RFP
Aligning Forces for Quality: 4.0
Program Focus
Eligibility Criteria
How to Apply
Request for Proposals
Key Dates
FAQs
Contact Us
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is committed to ensuring that all Americans receive quality health care. Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) is the core initiative of RWJF’s longstanding commitment to quality care, and aims to help targeted communities across the country set and achieve ambitious goals to lift the overall quality and value of health care in both the inpatient and outpatient settings, reduce racial and ethnic disparities in care, and provide models for national reform.
In this fourth and final phase of Aligning Forces, the participating communities will continue to build upon their prior work and success. They will integrate the building blocks of community-wide improvement in order to highlight specific, measurable improvements in quality, and will also continue to increase their focus on reducing the costs of and spending on care to promote not just high-quality, but more importantly high-value health care. They will do this while paying close attention to the impact and implications of these changes on the most vulnerable in their markets. Finally, the Aligning Forces communities will prepare to sustain their efforts and achievements beyond the Aligning Forces initiative.
October 16, 2012 3pm EST: Applications due. To begin your application, click here.
Program Focus:
In this fourth phase of Aligning Forces, the focus of the initiative will pivot even more toward community goal setting than in prior phases. Communities will use the specific tools they have developed in previous phases to help them meet their new health care quality and cost goals. The measure of an individual community’s success will be that community’s progress toward their respective goals.
The Foundation’s indicators will continue to be measures of the overall Aligning Forces initiative’s progress, and the Foundation will continue to monitor key indicator progress in this phase closely and rigorously. In this final phase, each community will be asked to:
- Have an increased focus on quality and cost goals and will require that the community submit a well-defined strategic plan that describes how the community will achieve its identified quality and cost goals during the fourth phase of Aligning Forces and how it will continue these activities past 2015.
- Have increased flexibility to identify the tools in the Aligning Forces framework (measurement, public reporting, consumer engagement and payment reform) it will or will not use to ensure successful completion of its quality and cost goals.
- Measure the community’s success in this phase will be the community’s progress toward its quality and cost goals.
- Continue to monitor Q/E indicators as measures of the overall Aligning Forces initiative’s progress but not as proxies for individual community progress.
- In this phase the community may broaden its definition of targeted disparities from only racial, ethnic and language to racial, ethnic, language, socio-economic, geographic or other differences.
Only current Aligning Forces for Quality grantees, representing established coalition that includes a wide range of community stakeholders, are eligible to apply.
How To Apply:
Proposals for this solicitation must be submitted via the RWJF online system. To begin your proposal, select the link in the e-mail and follow the instructions.
All applicants should log into the system to familiarize themselves with online submission requirements well before the final submission deadline.
Request for Proposal:
The RFP is available here. This document has been restricted to AF4Q Alliance Project Directors, NPO, and RWJF Staff. Please contact webteam@forces4quality.org if you experience any problem accessing the RFP.
Key Dates:
Applicant Webinar:
May 10, 2012 From 1:00pm - 2:30pm (EST). Please register here.
May 11, 2012 From 2:30pm - 4::00pm (EST). Please register here.
Proposal Due Date: October 16, 2012 at 3pm EST
Grant Start Date: May 1, 2013
FAQs:
The Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) is updated regularly, and is available as a direct download here.
Contact Us:
For technical support for the online proposal process and programmatic questions, e-mail af4q_rfp@forces4quality.org.