“Our country needs new ideas in healthcare delivery to improve quality of care while containing costs,” says Jerry Rappaport. “It’s a tall order, but bright young leaders in the medical profession have the ambition and aptitude to unearth new solutions we haven’t thought of before.”

With these goals in mind, Jerry and his wife, Phyllis, gave $260,000 through the Phyllis & Jerome Lyle Rappaport Foundation in 2013 to create and endow the Rappaport Award in Clinical Innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. More recently, the foundation made an additional grant of $100,000 to bolster the award program, which enables internal medicine residents to spearhead innovative projects.

The recipients of the third annual award—established in honor of Marshall A. Wolf, MD—are Elizabeth Richey, MD, MS, and Constantinos Michaelidis, MD, MS. They are designing a reporting tool to help internal medicine residents track quality outcomes and test electronic medical record use to improve chronic disease health management. Ultimately, they aim to increase quality of care and decrease costs for patients.

“How health systems function is becoming an increasingly important part of patient care,” says Richey. “As residents, we have seen the challenges of capturing data in these complex systems, and it’s been wonderful for us to learn from leaders in this area. With the Rappaports’ support, we’re working to build a powerful tool for learning and clinical care.”

Phyllis says, “For almost 20 years our family foundation has sought new and creative ways to promote emerging leaders and apply our resources to address society’s most intractable problems. If our Rappaport award winners can innovate to improve healthcare or contain costs, we all win. And if they can do both, we’ve hit the jackpot.”