Posted on February 10, 2012

Kazarian Foundation to Create 'Health Corps'

The Charles and Agnes Kazarian Foundation has announced that its proposal to create a nationwide "health corps" as part of the $1 billion federal Health Care Innovation Challenge has been successfully validated and retrieved by the United States Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

To be launched with $6 million from the foundation and $30 million from CMMS, the Health Corps of America will consist of healthcare professionals who deliver at-home integrative medicine to high-risk elderly populations. The corps is the result of research conducted by the foundation on the global benchmarks and high value-add best practices of internships and volunteerism in the field.

The effort will be based on four building blocks — benchmarking and best practices, critical thinking and education, integrative medicine, and home care — and will be managed and measured using three key performance indicators: healthcare cost savings, quality of life values, and sustainable jobs created.

The foundation, which will manage the project, estimates that total savings and value-add over the next three years will be $90 million, or three times the amount invested by the government. "[T]he corps would generate $60 million of net savings while creating 1,882 jobs," said a foundation spokesperson, "which is $31,881 in net savings per job."