The Kaiser foundation is far larger, and more independent. Funded initially by millionaire industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, Kaiser spends $40 million a year on public health research and advocacy, from its $500 million endowment.
The foundation, to be headed by Independence Blue Cross executive Lorina Marshall-Blake, will be funded with an initial $10 million set aside in IBC's 2010 budget, of which almost half will be spent over the next year, and the rest going for future grants.
The foundation will offer "roughly the same level of giving" as the insurer's current $1 million to $1.5 million yearly grants to nursing-student scholarships and grants at more than two dozen local nursing-education programs, and its $2 million in grants of $25,000 to $100,000 to private, nonprofit clinics for low-income and uninsured patients, Hilferty said.
In addition, it plans $1 million in new grants that improve "[health-care] access, quality, and driving down cost," Hilferty said. The first innovation grant will go to the Philadelphia-based National Nursing Centers Consortium to help nonprofit clinics in the area develop electronic medical-records systems.
The foundation will develop additional programs to support other areas of education for health-care professionals. It will also "check to see" if its grants "drive down costs, reduce emergency-room visits, and [promote] healthy lifestyles," Stephen Fera, senior vice president for public affairs, told me.
In the cloud
SunGard Availability Services, the disaster-recovery, managed-hosting, and cloud-services provider run by Wayne-based SunGard Data, has invested $14 million in a 12,200-square-foot expansion of its secure data center at the former Smith, Kline & French pill-factory complex in the 1500 block of Spring Garden Street.
