2 UCSF Projects Win Grants to Improve Health Care, Lower Costs

Two UC San Francisco faculty members have won grants to develop their proposals for improving health care while lowering costs at UC medical centers.

Nathaniel Gleason, MD, and Kevin Bozic, MD, MBA, are among four who received a total of $2.5 million in funding from the University of California to scale up existing projects already funded by the UC Center for Health Quality and Innovation (CHQI).

Gleason, an assistant professor in the UCSF School of Medicine, is leading the eReferral and eConsult program, which improves coordination between primary care and specialty physicians. He launched this program at UCSF after receiving a 2013 CHQI fellowship, and now is working to expand it across the UC Health system with $709,000 in new funding.

Bozic, a professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, is leading an effort to establish bundled payments for hip and knee replacements. Bundled payments, in which providers are reimbursed a set fee for an episode of care, will enable UC to compete for regional and national employer-based contracts for these procedures. After launching at UCSF with his 2011 CHQI fellowship, Bozic will establish a learning collaborative with UC Irvine and UC San Diego to standardize clinical practices and administrative procedures with $78,000 in new funding.

“By scaling up transformative projects like these, UC Health will see even more improvement in the quality and value of the health care we provide Californians,” said Karyn DiGiorgio, CHQI interim director.

Read more about these grants and awardees at other campuses on the UC Health website.