Our Collaborators

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to help people 50 and over improve the quality of their lives.

AARP distributes Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs reports to their membership.

AARP also is collaborating with Consumer Reports and the Choosing Wisely campaign, to extend the reach of  information about sometimes unnecessary tests and procedures.

The mission of the ABIM Foundation is to advance medical professionalism to improve the health care system. The Foundation achieves this by collaborating with physicians and physician leaders, medical trainees, health care delivery systems, payers, policy makers, consumer organizations and patients to foster a shared understanding of professionalism and how they can adopt the tenets of professionalism in practice.

Consumer Reports has joined the Choosing Wisely^TM campaign to provide resources for consumers and physicians to engage in these important conversations about the overuse or misuse of medical tests and procedures that provide little benefit and in some cases harm.

The American College of Physicians is the largest medical specialty organization and the second-largest physician group in the United States. ACP members include 132,000 internal medicine physicians (internists), related subspecialists, and medical students. Internists specialize in the prevention, detection, and treatment of illness in adults.

Consumer Reports and the ACP have created the High Value Care campaign, to produce brochures and videos to help patients understand the benefits, harms and costs of common tests and treatments.

ASHP represents pharmacists who serve as patient care providers in acute and ambulatory settings.  The organization’s more than 43,000 members include pharmacists, student pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. For over 70 years, ASHP has been at the forefront of efforts to improve medication use and enhance patient safety. For more information about the wide array of ASHP activities and the many ways in which pharmacists advance healthcare, visit ASHP’s website, www.ashp.org, or its consumer website, www.SafeMedication.com.

Healthcare Bluebook helps people save money on healthcare by showing them pricing and quality differences for common procedures at facilities in their area — charges that can vary by 5x to 10x.  Healthcare Bluebook empower people with simple price and quality information so they can find the best value.  Healthcare Bluebook works to make healthcare price transparency available to everyone via website and mobile apps to provide Fair Price™ information.

The Medicare Rights Center is a national, nonprofit consumer service organization that works to ensure access to affordable health care for older adults and people with disabilities through counseling and advocacy, educational programs and public policy initiatives.

Consumer Reports has worked with the Medicare Rights Center to distribute information about finding the best value in prescription drugs.

The National Business Group on Health (the Business Group) is the nation’s only non­profit organization devoted exclusively to representing large employers’ perspective on national health policy issues and providing practical solutions to its members’ most important health-care and health benefits challenges. Business Group members are primarily Fortune 500 companies and large public­-sector employers—representing the nation’s most innovative health-care purchasers—that provide health coverage for more than 55 million U.S. workers, retirees and their families. The Business Group fosters the development of a safe, high­-quality health-care delivery system and treatments based on scientific evidence of effectiveness. Business Group members share strategies for controlling health-care costs, improving patient safety and quality of care, increasing productivity, and supporting healthy lifestyles.

Through the National Business Group on Health, Consumer Reports is offering special reports on health-care issues for distribution by Business Group members to their employees.

NBGH also is collaborating with Consumer Reports and the Choosing Wisely campaign, to extend the reach of  information about sometimes unnecessary tests and procedures.

The National Center for Farmworker Health (NCFH), a private, not-for-profit corporation based in Texas, is dedicated to improving the health status of farmworker families. It provides information services and products to a network of more than 500 migrant health center service sites in the United States as well as organizations, universities, researchers, and individuals involved in farmworker health.

Consumer Reports has enlisted the NCFH to help translate and distribute materials from the Best Buy Drugs project.

The NCFH also is collaborating with Consumer Reports and the Choosing Wisely campaign, to extend the reach of  information about sometimes unnecessary tests and procedures.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is a nonprofit quality oversight and advocacy organization that improves and saves lives by bringing measurement, transparency and accountability to health care. NCQA evaluates, accredits and certifies health care organizations and professionals, including insurance plans, hospitals and physicians. Medicare, 40 state governments and two-thirds of the Fortune 500 rely on NCQA as the “gold standard” of health care quality review. Two out of five Americans-120 million people-receive care from accountable organizations that NCQA monitors. NCQA is committed to providing quality information for people who buy, use, deliver and study health care.

Consumer Reports licenses NCQA’s Health Insurance Plan Rankings and presents them in its annual comparisons of Medicare, Medicaid, and private health plans.

The National Urban League is a historic civil rights organization dedicated to economic empowerment in order to elevate the standard of living in historically underserved urban communities. Founded in 1910 and headquartered in New York City, the National Urban League spearheads the efforts of its local affiliates through the development of programs, public policy research and advocacy.

The National Urban League is affiliated with the Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs project, helping to distribute information to the public about cost-effective prescription drugs.

The nation’s largest philanthropy devoted solely to the public’s health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses  on improving both health and health care. RWJ invests in improving systems through which people receive care and in fostering environments that promote health and prevent disease and injury.

Consumer Reports has worked with the RWJ Foundation on a number of projects, including Care About Your Care, an effort to raise awareness about what patients can do to identify and get better health care.

As a participant in Care About Your Care, Consumer Reports provided  free rankings of Medicaid HMO services, to help consumers obtain better care.

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, based in Chicago, represents surgeons, researchers and allied health care professionals who specialize in surgeries of the heart, lung and esophagus and other surgical procedures within the chest.

Consumer Reports has teamed up with the STS to publish ratings of heart-surgery groups based on their performance data for bypass surgery. Using this information, consumers can see how surgical groups compare with national benchmarks for overall performance, survival, complications, and other measures.

The Leapfrog Group is a coalition of public and private purchasers of employee health benefits founded more than a decade ago to work for improvements in health care safety, quality, and affordability. Initially organized by the Business Roundtable, it is now an independent organization working with a broad range of partners, including hospitals and insurers.

The Leapfrog Hospital Survey is the only voluntary effort of its kind. The Survey focuses on three critical areas of patient safety and quality: how patients fare, which includes issues like mortality for common high-risk surgeries and procedures; resources used to care for patients measured by length of stay and readmission rates; and management practices that promote safety and quality, such as adopting computerized physician order entry to reduce medication errors. Leapfrog purchaser members use hospital survey results in contracting, open enrollment with their employees and other public reporting, benefits design, and value-based purchasing programs.

Consumer Reports includes Leapfrog data in its reports on hospital infection rates.

The Leapfrog Group also is collaborating with Consumer Reports and the Choosing Wisely campaign, to extend the reach of  information about sometimes unnecessary tests and procedures.

Choosing Wisely specialty societies

Physician organizations initially participating in Choosing Wisely^® include:

• American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology
• American Academy of Family Physicians
• American College of Cardiology
• American College of Physicians
• American College of Radiology
• American Gastroenterological Association
• American Society of Clinical Oncology
• American Society of Nephrology
• American Society of Nuclear Cardiology

The following Choosing Wisely^® specialty society partners released their lists in early 2013:

• American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine
• American Academy of Neurology
• American Academy of Ophthalmology
• American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery
• American Academy of Pediatrics
• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
• American College of Rheumatology
• American Geriatrics Society
• American Society for Clinical Pathology
• American Society of Echocardiography
• American Urological Association
• Society for Vascular Medicine
• Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography
• Society of Hospital Medicine
• Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
• Society of Thoracic Surgeons