The Commission will also yield important benefits to The Commonwealth Fund as an institution, informing the future direction and emphasis of the foundation's grantmaking programs. In turn, the Commission will derive benefits from new projects developed by those programs. Particularly germane to the Commission's work will be the activities and research undertaken by the programs on Quality Improvement and Efficiency, Medicare's Future, and Future of Health Insurance, as well as the recently launched State Innovations Program and Patient-Centered Primary Care Initiative. In addition, the Commission will provide valuable input in choosing the topics covered at the Fund's annual Bipartisan Congressional Retreat.

The Commission meets three times each year. At its first meeting in New York in July 2005, members began considering activities to pursue, including development of a framework for high performance and a health system scorecard. At the November meeting, held in Washington, D.C., the commissioners continued this work and began discussions on key policy issues to consider as well as possible performance measures for the annual scorecard. Future meetings are likely to include visits to institutions or organizations aimed at improving insurance coverage, access to care, quality of care, and cost performance.

The Commission's chairman is James J. Mongan, M.D., president and CEO of Partners HealthCare System, Inc. Support is provided by executive director Steve Schoenbaum, M.D., who is also the Fund's Executive Vice President for Programs; senior policy director Anne Gauthier, who is based at AcademyHealth in Washington, D.C.; and research director Cathy Schoen, the Fund's Senior Vice President for Research and Evaluation. The Commission Management Team also includes the Fund's president, Karen Davis, and its executive vice president and chief operating officer, John E. Craig, Jr. The Washington-based Alliance for Health Reform, an organization co-chaired by Senators Jay Rockefeller and Bill Frist, has received grants from the Fund to manage the logistics of the Commission meetings and to cosponsor policy briefings, roundtables, and the Bipartisan Congressional Retreat.