Jeffrey Brenner's Revolutionary Approach to Improving Health Care Delivery

The sickest 5 percent of patients in the U.S. account for over half of the nation's health care costs. 

In New Jersey, Jeffrey Brenner, MD, developed a revolutionary community-based approach to both lower health care costs and provide better care: identify the most expensive patients in the health care system and direct resources and brainpower toward helping them. Using data to map "hot spots" of health care high-utilizers—one patient had gone to the hospital 113 times in a year—Brenner and his team at the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers found a better, cheaper way to treat these costly patients through collaborative care, reducing hospital visits and costs by 40 to 50 percent.