Our Process
Focus Areas
The West Health Accelerator at Duke-Margolis is committed to solving pressing health system challenges and ensuring long-term sustainability and quality of care. While we are nimble and responsive to an ever-evolving health care landscape, our initial focus areas have been identified as strengthening Medicare accountable care, improving care for older adults with complex needs, prioritizing brain health, and integrating transformative therapies.
Policy & Learning System
The West Health Accelerator at Duke-Margolis is uniquely defined and powered by two interconnected hubs: The Accountable Care Policy Hub and The Accountable Care Learning Hub. Together, they create a system, or feedback loop, where policy is put into practice, and evidence and learning outcomes are translated back to inform policy. This structure allows the work to be both technically rigorous and responsive to real-world needs.
The Accountable Care Policy Hub makes sense of complex technical issues and turns them into actionable, practical policy solutions for federal and state policymakers. It serves as a neutral convener — bringing together public and private sector stakeholders to build consensus and advance reforms. It is intended to be responsive to policymakers’ urgent questions or emerging priorities. By operating at the intersection of technical expertise and political practicality, the policy hub helps to advance trusted solutions that are aligned with the priorities of today’s health leaders.
The Accountable Care Learning Hub creates a mechanism for evidence generation and real-world learning. It works with delivery systems, collaboratives, and community organizations to generate and synthesize evidence about what is working on the ground. This includes analyzing care delivery innovations, identifying barriers to spread, and testing new approaches in partnership with stakeholders. The learning hub plays a critical role in both upward translation — surfacing implementation challenges that require policy change and downward translation — helping organizations prepare for upcoming policy shifts.
Desired Outcomes
Our vision for the policy and learning system is to transform care within our areas of focus. We believe that our system will inform policy reforms and care redesign with an ultimate goal to empower better care, lower costs, and improved health outcomes.